Verizon CTO Says 4G Service Is On Track 74
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."
Wimax (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wimax (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm jealous (Score:1, Informative)
Well, guess I'll have to wait a bit longer to see it in Europe...
Not if you are in Oslo or Stockholm, for example...
http://www.telecoms.com/16997/teliasonera-launches-commercial-lte-in-stockholm-and-oslo
Re:VoIP (Score:3, Informative)
VoIP over a cell network would be a bad idea. At least in the traditional sense. Yes, it works, barely, but it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. The problem stems from the fact that voip infrastructures are usually designed around a mostly reliable network, that very occasionally drops entire packets. A cell network is designed to cope with an unreliable network, where bit errors are common. Everything, from codecs to protocols are designed with that in mind. Is the reason why G729 can get the same quality at 8kbps as AMR at around 12kbps. The extra bits are there for redundancy. In addition to that, you definitely want traffic shaping and QoS guarantees when doing voice. Otherwise your neighbor's porn downloads might crowd out your calls. You don't really notice that in broadband based voip installations, simply because there's usually a ton of bandwidth to go around. But a shared radio connection is an entirely different ballgame.
They will probably use packet switching (read IP) on the backend though. Once the bits are safely tucked in some fat fiber pipes.
Re:Wimax (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.
Re:Impressive.... (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?
Re:4g forces IPV6? (Score:3, Informative)
For LTE, IPv6 support is required, while IPv4 support is optional
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Deployment [wikipedia.org]
Re:VoIP (Score:3, Informative)