Motorola Xoom Owners to Finally Get Their LTE Love

Only a few months late, Verizon is now offering its promised 4G LTE upgrades to Motorola Xoom users. The Xoom, the first Honeycomb (Android 3.x) tablet, shipped in March, while promising an LTE upgrade, which kept getting pushed out, and out, and out.

eanwhile, Verizon has shipped other tablets that came with 4G LTE support built-in, such Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The Motorola XOOM with 4G LTE pre-installed will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning on Oct. 13 for $499.99 with a new two-year contract.

Those with 3G versions of the Motorola Xoom can visit http://www.verizonwireless.com/Xoom4GLTEupgrade for instructions on how to begin the 4G LTE upgrade process. Customers who signed up for email alerts will receive an email notification with instructions tomorrow.

Despite the fact that we found out previously that converting a Xoom to LTE shouldn't really take that long, and could be done by a technician in-store in probably about half an hour (or so), customers will be required to ship their devices in, losing their device for about six days, total. The upgrade is free of charge, and nicely, the customer's data plan does not have to be changed.

Customers are "encouraged" to back up their data prior to shipping the device.

Currently (these are slightly different than when the Xoom launched) the data plans for the device are:

• $30 monthly access for 2GB monthly allowance
• $50 monthly access for 5GB monthly allowance
• $80 monthly access for 10GB monthly allowance

When the Xoom 4G LTE reaches stores on Oct. 13, it won't differ from the original model in any way except for the addition of LTE connectivity. Whether or not this is enough to attract customers away from the iPad 2 and even the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 remains to be seen.