Update: We reached out to EE to see if mobile networks in the UK will be offering CAT 10 LTE in the future.
According to an EE spokesperson "we'll be demonstrating CAT 9 on our network at Wembley Stadium in the next couple of months, and CAT 10 will be next – we're intending to test in mid-2015. We're staying at the forefront of chipset developments so that we can keep getting the best out of our network and keep delivering the world's fastest 4G speeds for our customers."
The EE spokesperson also clarified the differences between CAT 9 and CAT 10. CAT 9 is capable of 450Mbps downlink enabled by bringing together three different LTE carriers.
CAT 10 offers the same, but it also allows for two carriers to work together to bring 150Mbps uplink. Although the Samsung announcement is quite early, EE is confident that it will be the first to market in the UK with CAT10.
Because of the carrier aggregation that's needed for CAT 9 and CAT10 it also means that very few networks will be able to take advantage of the two new LTE standards, with only EE, and to some extent Vodafone, being able to benefit from the new technology.
Original news story follows...
The race for creating the handset with the fastest mobile internet appears to be hotting up with Samsung apparently working on a new chipset for its mobile devices that will bring much faster data speeds.
At the moment most high-end phones come with CAT 6 LTE connectivity which allows download speeds of up to 300 Mbps, depending on the network.
Qualcomm, the company that makes a number of chipsets that power smartphones, has already announced that it is working on CAT 10 LTE, but it now appears that Samsung is working on its own solution for its Exynos chipset.
Speed demons
According to reports from the Korean media, Samsung's newest Exynos SoC will launch in 2015 and will include a 3-band CAT 10 LTE modem, which will allow for speeds up to 450 Mbps on compatible networks.
In preparation of the arrival of CAT 10 devices, major mobile carriers in Korea, including LG U+, are beginning to roll out CAT 10 networks.
At the moment we don't know whether or not the CAT 10 modem will be produced by Samsung or by another company.
It's expected that the Samsung Galaxy S6 will be powered by this chipset. However, in the past Samsung Galaxy devices have come in two models, one powered by Samsung's Exynos SoC, the other by Qualcomm.
If the Galaxy S6 comes in two variants then the Exynos-enabled variant could be able to achieve much faster mobile internet than its Snapdragon counterpart.
