Verizon, Samsung, Apple and T-Mobile Smartphones are all on their way to a faster place. What type of fastness are we talking about? Well, soon the innovative service speed called LTE-A, or Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) will be the hottest improvement of the current 4G LTE network. Theoretically, you can consider it to perform data delivery twice as fast as your current already fast device.

Just last week Verizon announced that by 2014, all subscribers to their network would be upgraded to 4G LTE, in a weaning-off 3G sort of manner. Why do this? Oh you know, because according to Verizon, their 4G LTE service has reached 500 United States markets, all but 1 state and is acquirable to 95 percent of the population. They predict the service will connect to 220 million customers and 24 billion smart devices sometime in the next year. Very ambitious of them, but for legitimate reason. With Verizon's 4G LTE service reaching almost 99 percent of their current subscribers, it is no wonder they were being the first to announce their plans for LTE-A just last week.

The big deal with the Advanced Wireless Service is it's speed. It is not the newest or hottest level of service but simply an progression of the already fast 4G LTE network! Potential speeds of up to 150 Mbps on LTE-A is basically twice as fast as what we experience on our 4G devices today. Apple is excited about their plans for the upcoming iPhone 5S to adopt the faster speeds, and to be released in the South Korean market before other countries. According to The Korea Times “Apple is allegedly in talks with the SK Telecom about launching an LTE-Advanced phone later this year.” So, lets get this straight, now that it is here everyone is gonna upgrade, correct?

Correct, and why not? Networks have no plans to pace themselves in this sort of front, so the movement is only expected to encourage other carriers to latch onto the LTE-A train. In fact, Samsung is officially ahead of the curve in terms of grabbing onto the advanced service. Their latest Galaxy S4 will be the first to be LTE-A capable. Although all carriers are in-the-know, it could actually be Samsung who presents the biggest push for accelerating the upgrade. Like Apple, Samsung is being first tested in South Korea. So we will see! Because they expect their faster service to hit Korean customers in just a few months, or sooner, it could be Samsung who beats Apple to the punch!