LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and is a standard for wireless data transmission that allows you to download music, websites, and videos much faster than with previous technologies like 3G. It is a technology for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and is used by phone carriers to deliver wireless data to a consumers phone. LTE is not technically the same as 4G, but its evolution has occurred on 4G networks. LTE provides fast data download speeds of several 100th megabits per second (Mbps), compared to several 10th Mbps for 3G, meaning that LTE is 5-10 times faster than 3G. When you see an LTE icon on your phone, it means your phone is connected to your carrier’s LTE network, and you can expect download speeds of up to 100Mbps and upload speeds of up to 50Mbps. LTE is often synonymous with 4G, though it represents a step below 4G. LTE is a redesign of the 3G standard to satisfy the demand for low latency data transmission. LTE supports data transmissions such as mixed data, voice, video, and messaging traffic. LTE did not originally qualify as true 4G, but the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) eventually applied 4G to LTE, as well as several other wireless standards. LTE is dramatically faster than 3G/4G, and in some areas, 3G is so slow or oversubscribed that it’s practically unusable to transmit any data beyond a block of text.