Verizon Wireless Abandons Market-By-Market Approach; Will Roll Out 4G All At Once
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Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) announced yesterday that a new 3G cell site went live in San Diego County, giving businesses along Interstate 15 3G coverage—and that’s years after Verizon initially started rolling out 3G.
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This time around as they start rolling out 4G, the company promises it will be different. Instead of trickling out upgrades market-by-market over years, it will blanket the country all at once, reports InformationWeek, which interviewed Tony Melone, Verizon’s SVP and CTO. The rollout “will be as close to all-at-once as possible. We want to give our customers a significant footprint,” and won’t “tease,” them with trial deployments.
That kind of deployment will be costly and requires a lot of technical resources to be everywhere at once, but Verizon is obviously feeling the pressure from its consumers who are gobbling up more data, and from its competitors which are also investing heavily. The carrier will be one of the first to roll out LTE, which is a high-speed, high-capacity bandwidth technology. However, it is still in the process of being developed and tested, and it was only in mid-August that Verizon made its first phone calls over LTE in test markets in Boston and Seattle.
But likely the carrier can roll out the technology and then worry about the details later.
For instance, Melone said the first devices on the network will be e-book readers, automobile services or even court-ordered electronic bracelets, which tend to be easier to support than a continuous voice connection. In addition, while the carrier may have plans to upgrade to LTE all at once, it will also have to upgrade the technology that connects back to the internet. Until that happens, the speeds and capacity won’t be any different than they are on a 3G connection today (especially if that network is already being taxed).
Indeed, Melone said part of what will make the transition faster is that the technology will be laid on top of the current network, and much of the existing infrastructure, including towers and backhaul should be able to be used.
Posted In: Mobile, Technologies / Formats, 3G, 4G, Broadband, WiMax, Companies, Verizon
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