Maybe it’s because Apple has patted the Big Blue on the back for handling the iPhone so well despite customer dissatisfaction, but apparently AT&T has now announced their equipment suppliers for their deployment of LTE in 2011.

The equipment partners will be Ericsson and Alactel-Lucent with trials planned for later this year and commercial rollout sometime in 2011.

AT&T has opted to stay with existing partners that provide the equipment for AT&T’s current 3G network after testing equipment for multiple suppliers in field tests. So does that mean AT&T’s LTE network will be just as bad as AT&T’s 3G network?

According to president and CEO of AT&T operations, John Stankey, the Big Blue has a ‘key advantage’ in that LTE is an evolution of the existing GSM family of technology which powers the AT&T network, and AT&T is able to move quickly and efficiently towards LTE.