A callthrough service for use only from the UK has no effect whatsoever on Orange's roaming fees.

So Verizon in the US is pushing forward with their LTE network and several LTE phones are being shown at CES this week.

AT&T is planning to turn on their LTE network by the middle of the year.

Is any of the European carriers planning to deploy LTE soon or are they pushing through with HSPA+?

Will be interesting to see if prices remain low for LTE networks as they are for the current 3G prepaid products. Verizon is definitely introducing premium pricing for its "4G" network.

Will this site still be called prepaidgsm.net once LTE is established?;)

I would guess that we don't change our name for a while, but our discussions certainly morph with the times. Half of our post are about data rather than voice and I think all of us are using VOIP where we can get away with it to bring the price down further. EU roaming regs have also changed our focus somewhat.

Perhaps we should call ourselves penny-pinching-global-wandering-nerds.com, but that is too long and moreover many of our respective currencies don't have pennies.

I am currently grandfathered on ATT's iPhone International with unlimited 3g worldwide. I really have a hard time believing they will let me move this plan to LTE. I could blow through 5 gigs before I hit entry customs.

In germany the first test-networks of LTE are running. The tariffs announced so far are mostly full-feature connections (phone + internet) for stationary use in regions without ADSL coverage. I dont know if they plan to offer mobile tariffs for these frequency bands as well.

Chris

Kind of surprising that US carriers are ahead of the curve for LTE deployment. It was the other way around for GPRS and 3G, I believe.

Of course I think the spectrum auctions in Europe about 10 years back cost carriers way more money than the auctions in the US. But those were only for 3G.

In the US, T-Mobile is also calling their HSPA+ network "4G" too in advertising.

Well, everywhere I have traveled in Europe I have gotten HSPA+ speeds, so why would I want 4G? What could I do with the extra bandwidth? Except watch movies at work? Which I have no desire to do...

LTE deployment in the US seems really patchy. I am still using AT&T HSPA. Nothing better in our area, in 'the suburbs' of Los Angeles.

Yes, besides if you use LTE you have to fall back to 3G / 2G every time your phone rings as the LTE networks are data only and dont support voice calls.

LTE is immature (handovers between LTE cells and especially to and from GSM and UMTS cells often fail), handsets are expensive, coverage is patchy and as dg7feq said devices need to fall back to GSM or UMTS for every voice call because the industry couldn't agree on a common standard for voice for ages. In addition there are over 30 frequency bands specified for LTE which will make global compatibility of handsets nearly impossible. Also as the following chart shows HSPA+ (if using the latest enhancements) provides similar and for on small frequency blocks even better spectral efficiency than LTE:
http://www.abload.de/thumb/spectral-efficiencymdubk.png
Also worth reading on this topic: WirelessMoves: Why the US Needs LTE Smartphones in 2012 and Why They are Not Needed and Wanted in Europe

Yes, i think at the current state of technology LTE is better suited for highspeed internet in areas without DSL coverage (if the offered tariffs were not that riddiculous)...

HSPA+ is fine where it is properly implemented. In the US, TMobile's implementation seems much faster and more reliable than ATT's. Unfortunately, 3/4s of that implementation is on the 1700mhz AWS band.