BlackBerry PlayBook to be available in LTE and HSPA+ versions

By Matthew Chung on 02/14/2011 01:19 PDT

[MWC 2011] There were whispers recently about the BlackBerry PlayBook arriving on Verizon Wireless and now it has been officially confirmed that RIM’s BlackBerry tablet will be available in various versions, including models that support Wi-Fi and LTE, Wi-Fi and HSPA+, and Wi-Fi-only models, in addition to the previously unveiled WiMAX version. It was also confirmed that the tablet will offer features such as Bluetooth tethering, Mobile Hotspot that allows your tablet to act as portable Wi-Fi hotspot, as well as BlackBerry Bridge. Will this be enough firepower to challenge the likes of the iPad, Motorola XOOM and other tablets?

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HSPA+ is also known as Evolved High-Speed Packet Access. It is a mobile broadband protocol that was defined by the 3GPP standard, release 7. In Theory, the HSPA+ data rate can go up to 84 Mbps (Megabits per second) downstream (to the mobile), and 22Mbps upstream (back to the tower). These numbers are achieved by using multiple streams, so they should be considered theoretical and peak performance numbers. The HSPA+ specifications support up to 168Mbps of theoretical peak rate. Although many HSPA+ carriers call it 4G, it is very different from 4G LTE.

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