Everything moves at a lightning pace in the mobile world – everything, that is, except network rollouts. Where as handsets can go from announced to old news in the blink of an eye, network upgrades.. can’t.
Take Verizon’s upgrade to 4G technology, for example: they announced the move to LTE in February 2009, and began testing in one small market nearly half a year later. They’ll be firing it up for commercial use for the first time later this year, with plans to launch in 30 markets before the year is out.
Fortunately, things seem to be speeding up. Verizon has just disclosed plans to double their LTE footprint, just a bit over 1 year after launch.
In an interview with Network World (as first noted by the guys at FierceWireless), Verizon CTO Tony Melone says that their LTE network should be up and running in 60 markets 15 months after the initial launch. As we mentioned above, the initial launch should go down sometime in late 2010 – and by our count, “15 months after” that means some time around mid-2012.
Alas, they’re not specifying exactly which markets they’re talking about here, though it’s probably safe to assume that major cities are pretty close to the top of the list.
Interestingly, some areas that currently lack 3G will get bumped directly from the super-slow and pretty dang old 1XRTT network up to LTE. That’s like going from not having fire to being able to shoot magma out of your hands.
[Photo Credit: Jschumacher on Flickr]
“Interestingly, some areas that currently lack 3G will get bumped directly from the super-slow and pretty dang old 1XRTT network up to LTE. That’s like going from not having fire to being able to shoot magma out of your hands.”
I thought all of Verizon’s markets had EVDO by now? They deceptively give that impression when they’re criticizing AT&T with “maps for that”…
there are some gaps on the map
idiot
Not very polite calling someone an idiot.
I’m not sure if there’s going to be markets going straight from 1X to 4G. I think Verizon did have 100% of *Verizon’s* footprint EVDO-upgraded, but there’s some ex-Alltel markets that are not EVDO yet, there’s also some Alltel markets that are EVDO Rev 0 instead of Rev A. Not too much though — and, they are still spending money on expanding EVDO (both increasing coverage, and adding additional EVDO channels in areas where the EVDO is busy). At the rate they are going they could have about 100% EVDO coverage in a matter of months — then the only areas going from 1X to LTE would be the fringe coverage that benefits from 700mhz’s extra reach.
Mid 2012?!? So you get to enjoy it for a couple months before the world ends? Thanks a lot.
We have to wait until mid 2012? It’s a long time until then
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Not surprising the if you have to update the networks with old school equipment why waste time and money going to 3g? The 4g upgrade should be the only thing rolled out anywhere from this point on.
It will be a long time before hardware can take advantage of the 4G network.
I see a bandwidth cap in verizon’s future just like there current network.
Great now I gotta buy a new phone, does anybody know if the motor Droid is going to support 4g in the future..?
I see a bandwidth cap in verizon’s future just like there current network.