Network World - Although Verizon has been relatively quiet on the 4G front lately, the carrier says it's still on track to have LTE services up and running by year-end.
Don't expect fireworks from LTE in 2010
What's more, Verizon is planning to aggressively expand its LTE coverage throughout the next four years so that by the end of 2013 its entire current 3G footprint will be converted to 4G. We chatted recently with Tony Melone, the executive vice president and CTO of Verizon Wireless, to get an idea of where Verizon is headed with its 4G LTE services both this year and beyond, as well as to get a sense of what customers should expect from their 4G coverage when it eventually does arrive in their market.
What is the state of Verizon's LTE rollout at this point?
There are two things that we need to do before we can launch LTE commercially. First we need to finish getting our infrastructure ready, which means getting all our antennas, our backhaul, and our leasing work with tower owners in order. Second, we need to get the new technology trial work done.
I'm happy to report that we're ahead of where we thought we'd be as far as site readiness goes. This was the area I was most concerned with a year ago, when we were wondering when all the tower companies and backhaul providers would be ready to meet our needs. But we've been pleasantly surprised by their readiness so far as they've really embraced this opportunity.
On the infrastructure side, anytime you introduce new technology there's going to be some learning that takes place. It's a process where we find performance issues, the supplier goes back and gets new version of the software ready and then comes back to us and so forth. And that's to be expected. The important point is that we're still very much on track to launch LTE commercially in 25 to 30 markets in latter part of this year. It's looking better each day, not worse each day.
The other piece of the story is mobile ecosystem and whether there'll be devices ready by the time we launch. So far, by being aggressive and deploying this technology before anyone else, it seems that the ecosystem has moved with us. So there are many chipsets and devices that are ready to go and we feel bullish about getting out to the gates early. All in all, the message is that we're bullish, confident and excited about where we're going to be headed over the next 12 to 15 months.
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