Verizon preps for next phase of LTE expansion

Verizon Wireless isn’t taking any breathers in its nationwide long-term evolution (LTE) network deployment. On Thursday, it will launch its mobile broadband service in 19 new large and mid-sized markets, taking a big step toward meeting its goal of 185 million Americans in LTE coverage by the end of 2011.

There are no surprises on the list. VZW pre-announced (Unfiltered: Verizon revs up LTE engine) all of these markets in two batches last May: Fresno and Sacramento, Calif.; Hartford, Conn.; Boise, Idaho; Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, Ind.; Flint, Grand Rapids and Lansing, Mich.; Dayton, Ohio; Erie, Harrisburg and State College, Penn.; Greenville-Spartanburg S.C.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Salt Lake City-Ogden, Utah; Spokane, Wash.; and Madison and Milwaukee, Wis. Verizon Wireless is also expanding the footprint of two previously launched markets: San Francisco and Detroit.

Verizon launched LTE in December in a big way covering 110 million pops and 38 markets on day 1 (CP: Is VZW’s 4G network too fast for its own good?). Since then its footprint has expanded to cover 74 markets, including most of the U.S. major metropolitan markets but also smaller university towns like College Station, Texas, and Lansing, Mich. Verizon isn’t revealing any new data on total pops covered, but with several expansion rounds in 6 months (Unfiltered: VZW turning up 4G in 6 markets), Verizon must be well on its way to meeting—if not exceeding--its goal of 185 million pops by year end.

While AT&T isn’t exactly hot on Verizon’s heels, it plans to introduce its own competing LTE service this summer in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, followed by at least 10 additional markets before the end of the year (CP: AT&T LTE to go live in five cities this summer). T-Mobile has no firm LTE plans of its own, but it has upped the ante on the high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+) service, upgrading the network to a dual-carrier configuration that will allow it to offer competitive speeds to LTE (CP: T-Mobile rolls out dual-carrier HSPA+).

Though Sprint and Clearwire were the first operators to get their mobile broadband networks in front of consumers, little has happened in Clearwire’s WiMAX expansion since it finished its 2010 rollout. After nearly meeting its goal of 120 million pops covered, Clearwire ran out of capital to fund the next phases of its rollout. But Sprint and Clearwire are expected to make a radical shift in their 4G strategies, moving to LTE while using Sprint’s new radio-agnostic network architecture (CP: Are we witnessing the resurgence of Sprint?). Either way, Verizon has jumped to the lead in mobile broadband, while its competitors play catch-up.

Verizon’s LTE rollout has been relatively seamless. It launched on time and to the scale it promised. Even its promised LTE devices have emerged on schedule. It now has three LTE smartphones--the HTC Thunderbolt, the Samsung Charge and the LG Revolution—as well as several USB modems and a LTE version of Novatel’s increasingly popular MiFi mobile broadband router. Motorola made a big splash when it announced what was supposed to be the world’s first LTE tablet, the Xoom (CP: Motorola leads off VZW LTE device effort). The device, however, launched as a 3G tablet and the promised module upgrade that would turn existing CDMA Xoom’s into LTE powerhouses has failed to appear. The honor of the first LTE tablet may well go to the Samsung, which plans to launch its Tab 10.1 on VZW’s new network soon—VZW has already begun taking pre-orders.

The only real black eye Verizon has suffered was an LTE network outage in April that shut off all 4G and 3G data access to Verizon’s LTE customers for more than 24 hours. The outage occurred shortly after Verizon had launched its first LTE smartphone, the Thunderbolt, and the MiFi, so the outage affected only a few hundred thousand subscribers. Verizon later acknowledged that the blackout was caused by a self-perpetuating software glitch in its IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) core (CP: IMS bug caused Verizon network outage).