Back in December we noted that Sweden's TeliaSonera had become the planet's first carrier to commercially deploy LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband technology. Initial press coverage pegged the speed of that service at anywhere from 20-80Mbps -- though a follow up speed test from one Swedish user clocked in at 42.78Mbps downstream, and 5.3Mbps upstream -- with 37ms latency. But what will speeds will real users see on a fully inhabited network? Swedish analysts Northstream this week published a research note complaining they were "only" seeing 12 Mbps on the network, with drops:That commentary quickly bounced around the Internet as an indictment of LTE, pushing Northstream to post a second entry backtracking from their criticisms and arguing that LTE was awesome after all:Broadband users in the United States will be given the opportunity to debate whether LTE lives up to the hype later this year, when Verizon says they'll deploy the technology in somewhere between 25 and 30 markets. Don't expect anything near 45 Mbps though -- Verizon has stated that initial downstream speeds will be dialed in somewhere between 5 and 12 Mbps. Congested markets may see slightly less, as in somewhere between 3 and 8 Mbps. It also certainly won't be cheap.