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December 22, 2010

Verizon Wireless says that its LTE Rural in America Program is going very well and now has signed up another Warner, Okla.-based Cross Telephone will now resell Verizon's LTE services using the 700 MHz spectrum to offer LTE in parts of Oklahoma. Before this, Cross only offered CDMA-based services under the Sprocket Wireless brand.

According to terms of the deal, Verizon Wireless will lease to Cross its 700 MHz upper C-Block wireless spectrum in the Cross Wireless service areas where Verizon has not built a network. Cross will then build and operate the LTE network in eastern and south-eastern Oklahoma serving its own customers, Verizon Wireless customers and customers of other LTE in Rural America participants.

Additionally, Cross customers will have access to Verizon Wireless’ LTE network throughout all of the U.S.

David Miller, President of Cross says “This program accelerates the benefits of new wireless technology for our customers and our communities. Verizon's LTE in Rural America Program helps extend the reach and capabilities of Cross and ensures that we are able to address the future needs of our customers in communities that have historically not been the first to benefit from technologies such as 4G LTE.”

Cross joins Oklahoma-based Pioneer Cellular, and Kentucky-based Bluegrass Cellular in participating in Verizon Wireless’ program . Verizon Wireless began rolling out its LTE services earlier this month with plans to cover more than 280 million potential customers by the end of 2013.

Cross didn't say which equipment vendor it planned to use for the LTE deployment, though Verizon Wireless is using Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent among its suppliers for network equipment. Cross did announce a deal with Ericsson earlier this year to deploy its CDMA-based network.

Verizon launched its long-anticipated LTE network on December 5th. Its new network uses a network technology known as LTE (Long Term Evolution). Verizon's new network will be live in a number of U.S. cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, among a few others.

About 69.7 percent of the 38 markets that Verizon is launching in initially will get the service starting Dec. 5. The company will have street view maps available on its Web site starting Sunday to show exact locations where the network is available.

The new service will also be available in more than sixty airports, including airports in seven cities that are not part of Verizon's initial 4G launch. The network will be rolled out over the next three years, much the same way the wireless carrier rolled out its 3G wireless network several years ago.

Verizon said its subscribers will have two options for data plans. They can get 5 Gigabytes of data per month for $50 or 10GB of data for $80 a month.

Users who exceed that limit will be charged $10 for every 1 GB that goes over the limit. The $50 pricing for the service is $10 cheaper than Verizon's existing 3G wireless service. The company said it will offer text alerts that will warn customers about the usage of their data plan.

The company is initially launching the service with USB air cards that access LTE for its laptop customers. These USB cards can also access the 3G network when 4G isn't available, Verizon said. LG and Pantech will be the first USB air card providers. The devices will cost $99 with a $50 rebate and a two-year contract for the service.

"It doesn't really matter what we 'label' our network. In our subscribers' daily lives this technology will change what people can do. I think even the ITU would agree this is a dramatic leap in performance," said Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone.

Verizon has already been airing advertisements on TV promoting the new network. The ad, along with competing advertising campaigns from competitors such as AT&T, is meant to get consumer excited about a new generation of wireless network.

Verizon and others, such as Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, are vying to be known as the fastest and largest 4G network in the U.S.

However, there's been quite a bit of talk lately that 4G doesn't automatically mean LTE, and vice versa.

The Verizon commercial, which features a young man using Verizon's 4G wireless network to throw a lightning bolt into the sky like a javelin, claims that Verizon has the most "advanced 4G" wireless network.

Verizon will be announcing more USB cards in the coming weeks, but LTE embedded into other devices will show up on the market in early 2011, including wireless handsets. The Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in January is expected to be the coming out party for some new mobile handsets.

Verizon executives have said previously that the company will have LTE handsets on the market in the first quarter of 2011.

The wireless carrier expects to expand its coverage after the initial 38 market launch. Within 18 months, Verizon has said that it expects to blanket the entire country with its service for about 67 percent of users in its footprint. By the end of 2011, it will be able to serve 200 million people with the service.

And by the end of 2013 it will be available to serve more than 285 million potential new customers.

But in all honesty, neither Verizon nor Sprint nor T-Mobile have a 'real 4G wireless network' today. Still, Verizon Wireless, which uses LTE; T-Mobile USA, which is using a version of its current 3G technology called HSPA+; and Sprint Nextel, which uses WiMax, all claim to have 4G wireless networks.

And while current versions of WiMax and LTE are typically referred to in the industry as "4G," they don't actually meet the International Telecommunication Union's strict definition of what 4G should be. To be legitimately considered a 4G technology by the ITU, the network technology is required by the agency to be IP-based and use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM).

The other main requirement is that the technology needs to support peak download speeds of 100 Mbps. The current flavors of LTE and WiMax are not that fast. And neither is the technology T-Mobile is using, which is called HSPA+.

Tony Melone, CTO of Verizon Wireless, said in a press conference that it doesn't matter whether the ITU calls its technology 4G or not, because wireless subscribers will notice a great boost in overall network performance, throughput and speed.

Verizon's new upgraded network will be faster than the current generation of 3G wireless services. Average 3G services offer between 700 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps. Sprint's WiMax service, built by Clearwire, offers average download speeds of around 6 Mbps, Sprint has said.

And Verizon claims that tests indicate it is getting download speeds of between 6 Mbps and 12 Mbps on its LTE network. T-Mobile's HSPA+ network also gives a significant boost, with speeds between 3 Mbps and 7 Mbps on average.

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Source: Verizon Wireless.