LG Electronics today demonstrated a new handset chip with a download speed eight times that of the fastest mobile phones currently on the market. 
The South Korean company revealed the chip, created for a technology standard known as Long-Term Evolution, or LTE.
The 4G technology, still under development, is competing with rival WiMAX to become the standard in super-fast web browsing and downloads over mobile devices.
"Now that LG has developed and tested the first 4G handset modem, a commercially viable LTE handset is on the horizon," said Paik Woo-hyun, Chief Technology Officer of LG Electronics.
Carriers have built test networks and the first mobile phones using the technology will be available to consumers in 2010.
LG has achieved wireless download speeds of 60 Mbps (megabits per second) and upload speeds of 20 Mbps. By comparison, currently, the fastest phones on the market use a technology known as HSDPA, and download at a maximum speed of 7.6 Mbps.
With the technology a 700 MB movie file can be downloaded in less than one minute at speeds of 100 Mbps. LTE also allows users to stream high definition movies without needing a buffer.
Companies such as Qualcomm, Vodafone, Verizon Wireless and Japan's KDDI Corp. are supporting and contributing to the development of LTE. Rival WiMAX is backed by Samsung Electronics, Motorola, Sprint, Intel and Clearwire.
