But what does LTE mean for consumers and operators?

At Ericsson's Plano, Texas Experience Center, Director of Advanced Technology Labs Keith Shank regularly demonstrates the capacity and speed of LTE to members of the media. "They want to know two things: when it will be available; and why this would be of interest to an operator," Shank says.

Slated for commercial availability in 2009, LTE will significantly enhance the mobile broadband user experience. To operators, LTE offers flexibility and simplicity.

Broadband Everywhere Marketing Director Lena Beming says that by building on the commercial success of GSM/WCDMA/HSPA services and superior interoperability with CDMA and TD-SCDMA, LTE offers scalability for operators that deploy it to extend capacity and speed for their existing networks. LTE also offers a choice of carrier bandwidths, from 1.4MHz to 20MHz, and it supports both the paired spectrum and unpaired spectrum in the same hardware platform.

These are just some of the benefits that position LTE as the next step in mobile broadband and a key part of Ericsson's vision for Broadband Everywhere. "LTE can be used both in densely populated regions to increase capacity but also in rural areas to use spectrum that you cannot use today in existing networks," Beming says.

LTE is becoming the natural migration choice for broadband operators, and LTE modules are expected to be embedded in notebooks, gaming devices, cameras and other devices, providing them with ubiquitous broadband coverage, Beming says.

Using a wireless Sony laptop at the Experience Center in Plano, Shank demonstrates LTE by simultaneously streaming six high-definition movies while downloading files. "We don't dwell on the bits and bytes. We like to show what people are going to be using this technology for," Shank says.

One of his recent demonstrations inspired tech blogger Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOM to write: "I could see a world without wires, a life with fewer cables running into the house and no phone jacks on the wall."

Shank says that he understands her excitement, but that LTE "really is about a world without caring how you're connected.

"LTE won't eliminate the need for wires, but it does mean that bandwidth is no longer a limitation."

Beming says that as long as there is a demand for high-speed access at home, it will be good business for operators to invest in fiber as well.

She says: "It depends on how you want to live. If you want to use a lot of capacity-demanding services like IPTV or file sharing in parallel at home, we believe fiber will play an important role in areas where it is economically feasible, and that means densely populated regions.

"In areas where it's not feasible, we believe LTE, like HSPA today, will provide a very good solution. Of course, LTE will always be used as a complement to fiber access."