at&t lte

AT&T gets its first LTE smartphones this weekend, Google Reader is integrated with Google Plus, and we learn more about the death of Microsoft's Courier tablet project.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Come Sunday, AT&T will finally flip the switch on its 4G LTE network--in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio--almost a year after announcing its LTE launch plans.

Although AT&T's marketing machine has leaned on the carrier's existing HSPA+ network to fill its 4G gap, AT&T's progress lags three-quarters of a year behind Verizon's LTE network, which now covers over half of the U.S.

Suffice it to say that AT&T customers have been waiting a long time for LTE, hungry for the more advanced 4G technology and … Read more

We celebrate the patent wars with Zynga while Google's stock gets downgraded. TV Studios think its a good idea to pull back their content on the Web and if you've ever faked a phone call on your cell phone, you're not the only one.

Maggie Reardon joins the show today. We talk about the impending world pandemic of swine flu. "Mean-Jeans Maggie" gives us the inside scoop from a NYU professor who thinks that the virus could be really bad in the fall. From now on, we're wearing face masks in the podcast studio.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com is trying to cash in on the fearmongering by offering a $25 dollar "Pandemic Swine Flu First Aid and Safety Kit." It's a couple of respirator masks, a pair of safety goggles, gloves, hand sanitizer, and booties. Yeah, you can pick up most of this stuff from your corner hardware or drug store for the cheap.

Also, a fan of the show turns Wilson into a "ce-web-rity" by adding him to a list of celebrities you can punch on Facebook. He cries in a corner today. Hopefully, you won't find Wilson on the roof of the CBS building any time soon.

Finally, we get in-depth about the possibility of the iPhone coming to the Verizon network. Neither Wilson nor Maggie thinks this will be a possibility in the near future. We think it's a ploy by Apple to get a better deal with AT&T. There is a chance the iPhone will appear on the Verizon network, when the company switches over to the LTE 4G standard.

Send in your comments to the404 [at] cnet [dot] com. Call us at 1-866-404-CNET (2638). We'll try not to catch the swine flu, but it maybe can't be helped, as Justin loves licking subway poles.

Alltel, the largest rural cell phone provider in the U.S., plans to use the same technology to build its 4G network that AT&T and Verizon Wireless have chosen, a move that should provide better coverage for next generation wireless users.

But don't expect a major 4G upgrade from Alltel overnight. The company said during its quarterly conference call on Thursday that it would likely take three to five years to deploy the new network.

Still, the fact that yet another wireless operator has committed to using Long Term Evolution or LTE, is a big deal. Since … Read more