Cincinnati Bell 4G Network Now Online

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A lot of tech blog readers only care about the latest and greatest phones from the four giant cell phone companies (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint & T-Mobile), even though there are a lot of great deals and great customer service to be had from the super-regional carriers in your area. Case in point, Cincinnati Bell, a local carrier in the (you guessed it) Cincinnati area has just activated their own 4G HSPA+ network, and have released a 4G phone to go with it.

It’s worth noting here that this isn’t LTE or WiMAX 4G, but HSPA+. That’s what T-Mobile uses for 4G, but is considered 3.5G by some tech purists. Regardless, it’s a lot faster than 3G and Cincinnati Bell is promising that users could see up to three times the speed on their 4G network than they’d see on their 3G network.

To go with that new faster network, they’re releasing the Huawei Ascend X 4G Android phone to go with it. It’s got some interesting specs, let’s take a look:

• 1GHz processor
• 4.1-inch touchscreen
• Android 2.2
• 5MP camera
• 5MP front-facing camera (yes, they claim that the front-facing camera is a 5-megapixel sensor too. Usually it’s just a small VGA 1.3MP camera).

They’re offering the device for $99 after rebate. While it’s got a big screen and fast processor, hardcore Android fans seem upset that it’s still running Android 2.2 as opposed to a newer version of the operating system.

It’s interesting that Cincinnati Bell is releasing the phone as the “Huawei Ascend X 4G”. Usually, with phones from manufacturers that aren’t known brand names in America, they will name the phone after themselves. The Huawei Ideos was the T-Mobile Comet, for example. HTC phones notoriously got this treatment, until recently when they became more well-known with phones like the Nexus One and Droid Incredible. Cheers to Huawei (pronounced “wa-way” in Han Chinese) if they can become a brand name amongst American consumers.

Any Cincinnati Bell customers planning on picking this one up?