Federal Information Processing Standard

LTE has exploded at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, where the three top U.S. wireless carriers and dozens of other vendors are showing off how they plan to use the high-speed research with new smartphones, tablets and even ATM's.

Alcatel-Lucent, which supplies LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) switches to the carriers, manned a booth showing several high-tech examples of how LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology) wireless innovation can support consumers, industry and government, just as providing police departments with the ability to transmit high definition, real-time video and data on crime suspects to officers in patrol cars.

Utility vehicle

Alcatel-Lucent as well displayed a utility vehicle, called Striker1, that was equipped with wireless bridging equipment designed to help police and fire personnel using different different radio frequencies frequencies to communicate with each other as so then as with smartphones and tablets over IP, said Wayne Eveland, an Alcatel-Lucent engineer and former captain in the New Jersey State Police.

The Paris-based telecommunications firm as well showed how inexpensive Android tablets mounted inside a vehicle can use LTE to be a primary interface to the cloud. A plumber or utility worker could transmit to a remote expert a video image of a utility switching box and highlight with a finger or stylus where trouble had occurred.

Jason Collins, vice president of emerging research at Alcatel Lucent, said Striker1 and other technologies displayed in its booth are designed to show how carriers and third party vendors can use LTE innovation to improve practical applications.

The LTE news at CES centered on how then the carriers

Much of the LTE news at CES centered on how then the carriers and infrastructure providers are working with a wide variety of partners to show potential users the benefist of faster wireless connections, especially for video communications and fast transfer of rich data content.

Of the three biggest U.S. carriers, Verizon Wireless has the biggest head start with 4G LTE networks operating in some 200 cities. The LTE networks offer average download speeds of more than 10Mbps, or about 10 times faster than predecessor 3G speeds.

Verizon and Samsung as well jointly announced at CES that the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which runs over the Verizon 4G LTE network, has been certified that it meets Federal Information Processing Standard specifications, opening its use to financial professionals and government workers whose work requires the FIPS security gold star.

AT&T, which runs LTE networks in 26 cities, announced five Android smartphones and a tablet that use LTE, as then as two Windows Phone 7.5-based smartphones at CES. AT&T as well set up an Application Programming Interface platform with tools for independent developers.

Sprint, the first carrier to launch a 4G wireless research on Wimax, said it will have LTE networks in 11 cities by mid-year.

Sprint as well announced at CES that it plans to offer 15 devices, including the Android 4.0-based Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, for its LTE networks. The Sprint devices will include particulars just as a Google Wallet application that works in point-of-sale applications with Nearly Field Communication innovation.

Verizon Wireless sells the Galaxy Nexus with NFC however Google Wallet point-of-sales purchasing does not function over that network.

T-Mobile USA, which lost momentum when its planned $39 billion merger with AT&T collapsed in December in accordance with the weight of government concerns, has focused on continuing to build out its 4G HSPA+ network.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen , or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .