Verizon tests first data connections on LTE network in Seattle and Boston
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 14th 2009 2:14PM
posted Aug 14th 2009 2:14PM
Update: We just spoke with Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone to expand a bit on the trials. Here are some of the key takeaways:
- Though they're not talking speeds with these trials specifically, they're confident in saying that everything's in line for 7-12Mbps down and 3-5Mbps up at launch.
- The trials are being conducted on commercial LTE base station hardware, but everything else is prototype (and changing very rapidly). The end-user equipment doesn't currently resemble anything you'd actually buy.
- Data modems will be the priority at launch, which makes sense considering the amount of industry flux with regard to voice over LTE. Though Verizon believes the solution will ultimately be some form of VoIP, there are several outstanding issues, including handling of 911 calls.
- Everything in the trial so far leads Verizon to believe that they're on track for a 30-market launch in 2010.
- This doesn't spell the end of EV-DO deployments -- far from it. Melone says that upgrades could continue all the way through to the initial LTE launch and beyond.
Cool
Clear Wimax is finished. They had years to launch their network and have failed to do so. On top of that, the LTE trials are already delivering much faster speeds.
@JKL
A. WiMax is more than capable to keep up with speeds of LTE. The current Clearwire speeds are throttled back for cost of deployment, but technically speaking, the current generation of WiMax is capable of 45Mbps. The targeted 2011 standards for Wimax 2.0, is that speeds will reach 350Mbps.
B. Applying faster speeds to the network means increasing bandwidth allocation, which translates to higher cost to the network base stations, and thus to the end user. You might not necessarily want to subscribe to 7Mbps service for $60, if you can get 3Mbps service at $30.
@JKL
How is WiMAX finished? They already have working networks...
these tests that LTE is finally doing were done 2 years ago for WiMAX... along with the fact the ieee standard hasent even been fully ratified so the current deployment isnt the final version, although it is incredibly impressive in speed as-is....
I have been reading a number user reviews and the majority have been quite bad. Furthermore, I have used wimax for years overseas - the service is crappy. Do you realize how hard it is for 2.5ghz to penetrate a building? For wimax to work it basically has to be point-to-point.
LTE, on the other hand, is so new that it's still in the final stages of development / testing (aka state of the art tech); and will operate at 700mhz. At that frequency, the signal can penetrate any building. Most of the world's heavy-weight cell companies are backing LTE. Therefore, it will be a world standard. If Clear had used UMB, well that would have been a different story.
It's nearly 2010 and the majority of the US is still waiting on clear. Whereas, between AT&T and Verizon alone, we are talking about 160 million potential customers. With the potential for LTE-Advanced to deliver 1gig of data.
Cover a few major cities with wimax first, then come tell me how awesome wimax is and will be in like 2027..
I love Verizon!! It's #1!!!!!!!!!!!!
I will love them when they get better phones.
iPhone on Verizon LTE anyone?
That is the ONLY thing that will convince me to cancel my AT&T contract and switch to Verizon. I have a 3G S, and it is an amazing phone, but the AT&T network is the worst by far. I've been getting dropped calls, calls not going through, bad call quality, terrible reception, and a weak 3G signal. It almost seems as though they've gotten worse! I've been with AT&T for 6-8 years now (first AT&T wireless, who I loved, then crappy-ass Cingular then the even worse "new" AT&T), and no bill credit, freebie, or bribe will keep me with their network if Verizon gets an iPhone. The only thing keeping me with them is the iPhone itself.
Ive got a 3GS too - and a VZW phone that work gave me....so I can compare signal strength at any time between VZW and ATT. I live in Phoenix and VZW BLOWS here in Phoenix. Im sure back east VZW may be better or in certain parts of the country VZW is better - but its all up to where you live as to who has better service. In Phoenix - ATT is the CLEAR winner in my book.
So even if an LTE iPhone is announced - Ill stick with ATT until I see the signal strength in my neighborhood.
@ Warren
I'm in the same situation as you. I have an iPhone 3G and a VZW phone and in Southern California the Verizon phone rules supreme.
I've said this before, but I went out to the Gibson Amphitheater in Universal City to see Cheech & Chong perform and after the show I could not get a call to go out to find my brother because we had gotten separated. I just kept walking around and getting called failed.
This is Los Angeles, the 2nd largest market in the U.S. and I was on Edge the whole time. And if I'm not mistaken that is AT&T's land line area as well.
The ATT service has gotten worse. When the first iPhone was released it was OK for me. A couple of dropped calls here and there, but nothing to get worried over because things happen.
The 3G was released and I had more problems with dropped calls and sometimes text messages wouldn't reach me for hours.
The 3GS was released and I don't like taking calls when I'm at home because I know they won't last for more then 10 minutes or so. In the middle of Des Moines Iowa I can watch the signal strength bounce all over the place. And getting a clear connection on a voice call is hit or miss. But for right now, mostly hit.
At this rate, I guess next June (at least for the Des Moines area) the phone will just simply not work. You can play with the apps, but you will need a different phone to actually make and receive phone calls...
But... Verizon already advertises their network as being 4G?
Oh wait, forgot, they're full of s**t.
Since when are they advertising it as 4G. I think you, sir, are full of s**t.
Verizon store down the street from me right now has a 4G network logo under the name.
Verizon doesnt claim to be using 4G already. theysay they have the nations most reliable 3G NETWORK, which it is. sure its top speed isnt quite at fast as hsdpa, but it is far more reliable, has a better coverage area, and isnt held together with duct tape like ATT's network is. Once Verizon and ATT both have LTE up, I stilll bet Verizons will be far more reliable and superior
Anthony I suggest you first learn what you are talking about before claiming others are full of s***. 4G Wireless is the name of the authorized retailer company.
I think you are thinking of Sprint - I've seen them wave the 4G flag....
Sprint's commercials do indeed say "bringing you the nation's first 4G network," which always kind of bothered me.
I like how Sprint says, "Bringing you the nations first 4G network!" Then they immediately show you the Pre.. as to say the Pre has 4G.
How in the hell does that bother you? Sprint does have a working 4G network in select markets, so they are technically the first to bring 4G into the US.
If I could someday soon get LTE for decent price without a ridiculous cap then hellz yeah, but something tells me not to get too excited judging by VZ history.
VZ history? Try all U.S. carriers' history.
So what kinds of speed/latency are they getting?
Yeah, it would be nice to know the real world latency.. In some of the info VZW has released they say it has pretty low latency... low enough for online gaming anyway. Time will tell.
how much $
$500 phones and $120/month "plan" lol
Please bring this to Raleigh, NC with a LTE iPhone in tow next year.
I think Sprint did one of these tests on WiMAX ... in like 2006 ohh yeah, and Nextel did one like this on Flarion OFDM down in North carolina... was it 2003 or 2004?
what's the bandwidth cap on this service? hopefully the 5GB cap goes out the window
Maximum for LTE is 100 Mbps down, 50 Mbps up. Though with more antenna's etc. you could push this to 300 Mbps down. See wikipedia.
Ifred...
He meant the bandwidth caps that Verizon uses to limit your usage. Currently, if you pay $60 per month for a cap of 5GB of usage, you are paying $12 per GB. Once you exceed that, if the price goes up to 25 cents per MB for your overrages, you are paying a whopping $250 GB for anything over 5GB of usage in a month. People are receiving monthly bills with Verizon and AT&T of thousands of dollars in overrage charges.
If Verizon or AT&T employ bandwidth caps as they are doing with their 3G technologies, they will be committing suicide with the technology because Clear does not charge overrage charges with their very affordable unlimited plans. Also, Clear's 4G WiMax technology is quite amazing!
I have no idea what any of this means. Where am I?
You're on the internet.
Welcome, friend.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I think AT&T has given up on the 3G. I think they are just going to work towards LTE as to not be left behind when Sprint is already rolling out 4G. What would be the point to try and make a dying technology better and more efficient. Won't the LTE towers be backwards compatible with edge and hspa and hspda anyways?
Is anyone else bothered by the 4G LTE logo? It looks like three squirts of ketchup are shooting up. Horrible.
It looks more like horror-film blood spurting from the L. Doesn't exactly scream good design...see what I did there?
It's like saying, with LTE, you get 3 bars...
but what if I want 5?
Of course with WiMax, you only get 2 bars.
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/wimax-logo.gif
They were doing something in the Detroit area yesterday. The data network was down for a good 3 or 4 hours yesterday afternoon.
-Intel as of yet has not committed to providing an onboard LTE solution on their laptops. WiFi and soon WiMax will be on hundreds of thousands of laptops.
-LTE is not a standard, WiMax is
-LTE is not running in a production environment in any country, WiMax is
-Qualcomm has delayed its commercial LTE chipset until mid to late 2010. How are they going to roll out the tens of thousands of devices to make it successful with no chipsets? This doesn’t add up for a large launch in 2010.
-If it turns out Clearwire cannot make a go of it with Intel, Google, TW, Sprint, Comcast, etc on board, why would the business case for LTE be any different? Surely they cannot expect to charge a whole lot more than Clearwire for just a little faster speed.
-Why would Verizon (or ATT for that matter) want to encourage more people to leave their VERY profitable landline business to go wireless? For example, if they are making $120 a month profit on a T-1 that costs $140, would it make sense to offer a 10MB wireless connection with unlimited data for $40??? They would be hastening their own demise. Just look at how many people are disconnecting their home phone service in the last few years.
This is just VZ trying to prevent Clearwire from being successful with lots of Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt.
WiMax is currently an optional inclusion on the Centrino2 chipset; it is not a mandatory inclusion, so you would have to carefully check your notebook for Centrino2 with WiMax.
-Intel as of yet has not committed to providing an onboard LTE solution on their laptops. WiFi and soon WiMax will be on hundreds of thousands of laptops.
See above commentor
-LTE is not a standard, WiMax is
Mrh? It's in the final draft of the standard currently, pending ratification. By your reasoning, you're saying that 802.11n is not a standard.
-LTE is not running in a production environment in any country, WiMax is
Maybe because a certain idiotic ruling body renigged on previous agreements for spectrum that would be used for it and pushed plans ahead for carrier forcibly.
-Qualcomm has delayed its commercial LTE chipset until mid to late 2010. How are they going to roll out the tens of thousands of devices to make it successful with no chipsets? This doesn’t add up for a large launch in 2010.
Qualcommisn't the ONLY company in the chipset game, there are other companies which may have something in the works, like Broadcom.
-If it turns out Clearwire cannot make a go of it with Intel, Google, TW, Sprint, Comcast, etc on board, why would the business case for LTE be any different? Surely they cannot expect to charge a whole lot more than Clearwire for just a little faster speed.
Considering the service isn't in widespread deployment yet, worrying about pricing right now is pointless. And why would the business case for LTE be any different? Let's see....maybe because most of the carriers on the planet have at least announced they will be moving towards it and supporting it as their future technology? How many carriers does WiMax have that have stated the same?
-Why would Verizon (or ATT for that matter) want to encourage more people to leave their VERY profitable landline business to go wireless? For example, if they are making $120 a month profit on a T-1 that costs $140, would it make sense to offer a 10MB wireless connection with unlimited data for $40??? They would be hastening their own demise. Just look at how many people are disconnecting their home phone service in the last few years.
You fail at realizing the difference between wireline (landline) and wireless. To add bandwidth on wireline, you drop another cable. Wireless bandwidth is relatively finite and has to deal with possible interactions with other frequencies while wirelines are self contained. Wireline also has less signal fluctuation worries due to weather and seasonal concerns (foliage in summer fluttering in the wind acting like so many little reflector dishes, cables care much less if it's snowy or storming out, etc., not to mention less worries about terrain blocking signal).
This is just VZ trying to prevent Clearwire from being successful with lots of Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt.
And enough people willing to look past alternatives and common sense to spread their own.
They are doing a live demo in the LA area first week of september for business customers. Ask your rep about it.
Maybe I should have stayed with them instead of switching for an iphone.......nahhhhh
Eh?
You make some really valid point here. Here is my 2 cents
-Having an accepted standard is favorable to not having one, as it makes interoperability possible between many carriers possible especially worldwide. It might take another year or so before than is decided for LTE.
-Having Intel provide it on a chip is ultimately much easier than having consumer go out a buy an air card/connection card. Hence this is why Qualcomm pushed Gobi. ST-Ericson is not likely to have chipsets until mid/late 2010. No clear word on when Broadcom or other vendors will have actual GA chips for laptops.
-You raise an interesting point on LTE being a carrier standard vs. WiMax. My question my be, what happens if Clearwire actually delivers on building out to 100 million pops by mid 2010 and has significant customers? Will other carriers see this as a success and jump on board while waiting for LTE to get figured out. I don't think anyone know the answer to that one.
-I have been in the telecom business for many years and I am very familiar with the strengths and weakness of wireless technology vs. landline services. Wireless clearly doesn't have the capacity or QOS to provide very high speed, mission critical broadband services to the enterprise but there are many applications that don't need the five nines of reliability or have the bandwidth requirements of landline. Think Point of Sale, ATMs, retail branches, remote offices, etc. They might not need a DS-3 (and especially ISDN). Wireless might work (especially since 4G solves a lot of latency issues). I'm just saying that if I were a LEC, do I want to start loosing enterprise customer's WANs to wireless? Either I drop my prices on landlines services or adapt to wireless when non-essential solutions are required. That is margin that is permanently gone from the books. Just look what IP services did to voice prices. Back to my earlier point, why would I want to do this quickly, should I want to delay this for as long a possible?
Ultimately, my point is that Clearwire does have first mover advantage, lots of spectrum, and lots of partners to sell it now. I think the big question that no one discussed was the value of a huge 2.5 MHz spectrum holding vs. a smaller 700 MHz that VZ, T-Mobile and ATT have. Will customers select WiMax with the limitations of 2.5 (i.e. ability to get coverage indoors) vs. the likely caps and higher pricing a more limited 700 MHz spectrum. Will carriers provide that last mile high speed bandwidth to the towers to really provide the "best case" throughput (is there a business case)? Will there be demand for applications that require huge bandwidth (Video conferencing, online gaming, online gambling, HD video streaming, etc. come to mind)? Will the bandwidth has soft caps, hard caps or no caps?
Much will play out in the next year. With any 4G technology, I think the winner is the consumer as they benefit from lower data prices, higher throughput, lower latency, (hopefully) better coverage and the ability to use new applications.