The shift will create openings for new competitors such as CoverHound, a well-funded San Francisco startup that has built a multiple-carrier comparison engine.

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Furthermore, ZTE will continue to keep every US carrier happy with its multiple handset SKU business, with this year expecting more than 20 different SKUs in the US, most of which will be LTE-enabled.

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The rival carrier has said it plans to have multiple 4G smartphones and tablets by the first half of 2011.

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It signed a deal earlier this year to source phones from an undisclosed Asian contractor that will work with the carrier's chosen technology, code-division multiple access (CDMA).

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Carrier aggregation is a way to boost LTE performance by tapping into multiple LTE streams on different frequencies.

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