Verizon on LTE Launch: All at Once

Mobile phone carrier Verizon Wireless unveiled recently a few more details on its plans for deploying the upcoming 4G network based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. According to the company, the rollout will be made on a wide range of markets at once, and not on one market at a time during a long period of time.

The deployment “will be as close to all-at-once as possible. We want to give our customers a significant footprint,” is what the company's SVP and CTO, Tony Melone stated in an interview with InformationWeek. The first LTE rollouts, as many of you might already know, are slated for next year, with almost 30 markets to see LTE connectivity before 2011 is here.

The new approach is meant to eliminate the long period of time it would take for the technology to become available in some of the areas around the country, as it happened with the deployment of Verizon's 3G network, which has just reached San Diego County. Even so, it should be noted that the carrier will have to invest more on the new approach, and will also have to make use of a lot of technical resources.

On the other hand, Verizon already stated that it planned on playing big with LTE. The company will be one of the first to deploy the technology around the world, as well as the first one to have it available commercially in the US. Facing competition from WiMAX and Clreawire's 4G network, it will have to impress with its LTE network so as to become successful.

We should also mention that Big Red already announced successful testing of LTE in several markets, and that in mid-August it announced its first phone calls over LTE in Boston and Seattle. The upcoming 4G network based on the high-capacity bandwidth technology will enable it to offer higher speeds to its users, as well as enhanced services.