Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam has detailed the carrier’s plans for its revised LTE network deployment during a developer webcast yesterday.
The LTE network deployment will begin as scheduled late this year with two as yet unidentified test markets, one on the east and west cost respectively in stead of full commercial launches. More information on the test markets will be divulged closer to the network launch.
Device authentication will be handled via a derivative of the W-CDMA USIM standard, but the cards will likely be proprietary to Verizon Wireless hardware that has been certified for its network and not cross-compatible with other devices.
McAdam also confirmed that speeds for its initial LTE deployment would range between 8-12 Mbps while delaying its commercial launch to the second half of 2010.
So much for using unlocked devices on Verizon. Any App, Any Device?
Any Trojan, Verizon’s Horse.
Those speed are the same as wimax
very true! I thought LTE was supposed to be twice as fast as wimax? Sprint has already proven that it can reach those speeds and has it released already. Hey VERIZON, cmon catch up!
As we’ve reported for years, the problem is not the air interface. That’s why WiMAX hasn’t focused on jaw-dropping speeds, and has instead focused on making the service work, and be as cheap as possible to deploy.
The problem is the local loops. While Euro snobs mock the United States for being behind in bandwidth, our country is 3,000 miles wide. Laying fiber to every wireless tower in the country is not a simple task. As such, each connection isn’t going to be able to pull dozens of megabits… for probably the next dozen years.
This is why we reported years ago that networks like Sprint are needing to open up dark fiber, in order to feed fixed WiMAX cell sites, and use that as a backhaul for an entire city’s cell cites.
Does that dark fiber affect vzw too?
Verizon will need to tap it, just like all the wireless providers will. The wireless networks of today still predominantly rely on T1 lines, layered on top of each other to deliver 300 to 1000 kbps per connection. And there are usually very few concurrent data sessions. With 4G, you have constant connections, each demanding eight to twelve megabits easily.
I’m glad this article finally brings to perspective what fallacies all the LTE testing articles led people to believe. It seems every forum was filled with misinformed posters boasting of “LTE this and LTE that and 50meg this and 100 meg that.” All those tests are in a lab and don’t take into account real world factors such as distance from sites and backhaul. I’m glad they finally gave what I had long waited for: a real world life figure. Well almost. That will come when people start to use their network. It turns out LTE isn’t the technology to bury Wimax after all since some users report similar speeds (8-12 meg) on Clear in Portland.
I’ve seen up to 16meg on a good day in Portland.