HSPA+ now than LTE later?

[nRRe]

Read in an article AT&T would offer HSPA+ 4g phones now, than later on in the year offer LTE 4g phones. Even said the HSPA+ phones would not work on the LTE network obviously.

How can a company do this and be taken seriously?

Are they going to continue to build out their HSPA+ network and LTE at the same time? Or once LTE is turned on, they will stop building HSPA+ infrastructure?

Seems like a joke, "Buy this phone with 4g!...have it be near useless in 6 months and you can't upgrade fro another 18 months"

[Mister Xiado]

You can "upgrade" any time you like. You're just not getting a $400+ discount on the price of the phone whenever you want.

Don't be a consumerist.

[jcastilloalonso]

LTE in either Verizon or AT&T will be a joke before 2012. HSPA+ will give pretty good speeds, I understand that Verizon will be a bigger difference as they are going from "basic" 3G (EVDO) to LTE, but for AT&T it will be like a evolution. And I really don't want a LTE device until it can do voice and data under LTE (LTE will be data only at the beginning)

Either way, cellphones are evolving pretty fast, and whatever you do or get will be outdated pretty fast.

[papped]

Uhm, Sprint is using wimax, which if they switch to LTE down the road, existing wimax phones will not work on LTE infrastructure...

Upgrades happen and existing infrastructure doesn't disappear overnight. Consider it a bonus that you can get upgraded speeds on existing HSDPA+ without price increases.