Verizon Wireless' LTE Advanced technology

A few months ago, I saw a press release from Verizon Wireless saying that they supported LTE Advanced (true 4G) in two cities near me, giving much, much, much faster speeds.  You know how they were ridiculing Sprint for being good around Kansas City, and all that?  Then, they started using technology that was even better than what they had to trounce Sprint.

I've been using a Verizon Wireless hotspot for over two years, after the previous hot spot couldn't connect to Sprint for more than 6 hours--something Sprint couldn't explain--but my phone on Sprint was working perfectly.  Back around May, I got the latest, greatest hotspot from Verizon that would support LTE Advanced, XLTE, and allow international roaming.

I was in Modesto, CA today, waiting for someone, and I decided to download something to my phone because iTunes app updates are limited to 100MB over the air.  Beyer Park has a tower and Sprint's service is the best there, of all Modesto.  I hoped that it would work out that way with Verizon--only much bigger.  I regularly get 40-50 Mbps with Sprint there.  I'm sure I read that Verizon Wireless was suggesting hundreds of Megabits per second.

I was so disappointed.  I do better at home without LTE Advanced.  I tested it with three apps and my download of 1.2 GB took a very long time, unfortunately.

I'm guessing that it's similar to when Verizon Wireless was first implementing LTE.  A friend lived in a small town that they claimed had LTE.  She tried to show me something.  After a few minutes of churning and getting nowhere, it dropped to 3G and instantly the results were shown.

Does that make it a lie or an exaggeration?  In advertising, I believe it's known as fraud, but it looks like an overstatement to claim a city name without covering the whole city.

Update 2019.03.05: Sprint apparently has LTE Advanced in most locations now, as well as having 3 band LTE in some locations.  It really is amazing to see 100 Mbps on a phone.  5G may be coming, but we still don't have Voice over LTE available, so that they can ditch GSM and CDMA services.