The chip maker says LTE will deliver speeds that make mobile broadband indistinguishable from the best possible wired broadband available today.

"The commercial launch of handsets will likely begin in early 2011, but if they're very aggressive then it could be late 2010," said Enrico Salvatori, SVP and general manager of Qualcomm Europe. He expects operators to deploy LTE technology initially in urban areas, with HSPA+, HSPA and 3G in suburban and rural areas.

A Qualcomm roadmap at its Showcase event in London showed HSPA speeds hitting 84Mbits/sec down and 23Mbits/sec up by 2012 – with the same chip supporting LTE)speeds of 143Mbits/sec down and 75Mbits/sec up.

Elsewhere the company talked up the fact that its chipsets are powering pioneering devices like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, T-Mobile G1, BlackBerry Storm and the INQ 'Facebook' phone. It added that its single chip Snapdragon processor is delivering smaller, less power hungry devices, and that more than 15 manufacturers areworking with it.  The first Snapdragon devices are expected to be launched in the first half of next year.

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