So, what is this LTE on the iPad?

Taken from: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/110711-what-is-lte

So, like many of us, I've been seeing "LTE" on the iPad and Smartphones - what is it?

Borrowing directly from the article, we get:

"LTE stands for Long Term Evolution. Its full name is 3GPP Long Term Evolution for the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, or 3GPP UMTS LTE for short. Most refer to the standard as UMTS LTE or just plain LTE. While UMTS LTE is the more correct name, it will be called LTE for the remainder of this article for brevity.

But that doesn't tell us what LTE actually is. LTE is what the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (the group responsible for standardizing and improving the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, or UMTS) designates as their next step. UMTS is the group of standards that define 3G for GSM networks across the world, including AT&T and T-Mobile’s 3G networks. For those who use CDMA2000 (subscribers of Verizon, Sprint, etc.), then LTE is pretty much the replacement for your mediocre 3G network."

So, we are talking about standardizing the mobile telecommunication system - and looking at its evolution and improvement.  

As technology occurs, there are generally new generations of products - software, hardware, telecommunications, and then tweaking occurs to make the new generation better / faster / more efficient.  As an analogy, television first came only in Black and White, but eventually color came along, and eventually hi definition color and more pixels, better images, etc.  Likewise with the telecommunications standard - improves are to be expected.  Rarely is a product the 'ultimate' - 'be-all and end-all'  (and ... at some point in time in the future, LTE will be replaced by another acronym basically meaning 'even better than LTE'!!!