AT&T has a problem in Chicago. The city was one of the first to be upgraded to the wireless carrier's next-generation LTE (long-term evolution) network, which packs more data into a radio signal and offers much faster download speeds. But independent tests published this month showed that AT&T downloads in Chicago are less than half the speed of those on Verizon's LTE network there. The reason? A lack of radio spectrum. AT&T's radio licenses allow it to use only a 10-megahertz chunk of the airwaves for its LTE network in Chicago, compared with the 20 megahertz it has in other cities

AT&T faces the same problem in Los Angeles, and it's just part of a challenge confronting the whole mobile communications industry: how to reconcile consumer expectations of forever faster, cheaper downloads on mobile Internet devices with limited room in the airwaves.

To read the full, original article click on this link: The Great Bandwidth Brawl - Technology Review