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Verizon CTO Says 4G Service Is On Track

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the too-many-g's dept.

Verizon has announced that it is on track to roll out their new 4G LTE service using the 700 MHz band that it acquired in the recent FCC auction. Targeted first towards USB air cards for laptop customers, the service will be extended to cell phones and other mobile devices with embedded LTE eventually. Testing in Boston and Seattle should conclude in the next couple of months and commercial deployments should follow soon thereafter. "Lynch said getting voice to work over LTE has been particularly challenging. But that challenge is getting resolved as Verizon and other members of the GSMA announced Monday they are supporting a standard that uses IMS technology to deliver voice services over LTE. Still, more work needs to be done. Until a solution is complete, Verizon will use its CDMA network to provide voice services. And the LTE network will be used for data. Eventually, when voice over LTE becomes a reality, Verizon will use that technology. Verizon will also have to integrate EV-DO into its LTE offering to ensure that customers can switch to the 3G EV-DO network when the 4G LTE network is not available. Even though Verizon is being aggressive in building its network, it won't happen overnight."

6 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Impressive.... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, everything is hunky-dory, going right according to plan.

    But the phone company doesn't actually have any way of making the new technology make voice calls, so they'll be retaining the legacy CDMA technology. And, of course, they'll be building the intermediate legacy EV-DO technology for the forseeable future to deal with places where the new hotness is not actually available. Oh, and support for mobile devices is planned for "eventually"...

    I wish my standards for success were this achievable.

    1. Re:Impressive.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm guessing you don't understand how long it takes to roll out new generation to one city, let alone an entire country, let alone a country with the size and landscape of the United States.

      Nevermind the fact that once the cabinets and antennas are in place, that all of the cell phone makers have to create phones with new radios that can talk on this fancy new generation.

      I'd be _extremely_ happy to have an upgraded Verizon BlackBerry that has a separate radio JUST for extremely fast data. Do you really think an LTE call is going to sound any different than a EV-DO call? Why on earth would anybody care about voice calls when LTE users should have the speed and bandwidth to handle real VoIP calls? Who will care about voice plans then?

      The real truth is that Verizon is moving forward on this and on-schedule, while AT&T has just confirmed what company will supply their cabinets and will begin building it out next year. There is no big switch somewhere that somebody simply needs to flip ON for 4G to be ready for you. It takes thousands and thousands of employees and contractors to make it happen, so just wait patiently like everybody else, okay?

    2. Re:Impressive.... by dlevitan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The lack of voice over LTE is because it will use the same data channel for voice (i.e. VoIP). So it's not like any of the hardware has to be change. The reason it's not being deployed now is that there's no consensus over how voice should be done on LTE. I'm thrilled that VZW is waiting. LTE will be the global standard, and it will be good if they maintain full compatibility with global networks. Unfortunately, VZW is one of the first companies to deploy it - it appears the rest of the world is lagging behind.

      As for it needing to retain CDMA on phones, that's also good. IT will be a while before VZW deploys LTE with the same coverage as CDMA. This is needed for backwards compatibility.

      While I understand it's a slow process, consider that VZW, unlike most of their competitors, is actively pushing forward with LTE.

  2. Wimax by Psychotic+Lab+Mouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is worth nothing that while LTE is still in development Sprint and Clearwire have already deployed 4G services that are operational and covering 30 million people in the US. Wimax is deployed in around 145 countries worldwide. Sprint will have a 4G device in 2Q or 3Q this year, and will likely have 120 million people covered by 4G before LTE is even deployed here.

    1. Re:Wimax by XXeR · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep, I love my Sprint/Clear Wimax service...I get ~12Mb down / ~1Mb up pretty much everywhere I get a signal! They even already have solutions that will fall back to 3G when 4g isn't available. The coverage is definitely sparse right now (at least in my area I have to be pretty close to a major road and near the city), but they're clearly far ahead of this Verizon/LTE rollout.

  3. Re:VoIP by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's the plan. LTE will use SIP with QoS to guarantee maximum latency and jitter. To all of the people saying you can't use VoIP: how stupid are you? Almost all voice calls in the western world go over packet switched networks and have for most of the last decade, and most of the last three decade in some cases. Do you think things magically get worse because those packets have an IP header? If you make a landline call anywhere in the UK or Canada, you are using VoIP.

    The problem is that some of the standards for telephony services over LTE (which is an all-IP network) have not quite been finalised yet. This includes things like SMS bridges and the standards for mapping SIP addresses to phone numbers.

    --
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