Verizon Wireless reveals another LTE vendor

Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) today filled in another piece of its long-term evolution puzzle, announcing its first testing solutions vendor Spirent Communications, which will handle the initial certification of 4G devices. With its commercial launch as close as six months away, VZW has still yet to name any device vendors for its new mobile broadband network, but it now has the platform in place to begin testing and approving its first LTE data cards.

Verizon has kept most of its vendors close to the vest. Aside from Spirent, it has only revealed its big access and core network vendors: Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) will build the radio network and, along with Starent Networks-Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), which will build the evolved packet core. Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks (NYSE:NOK, NYSE:SI) will also implement VZW’s IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) next-generation service delivery architecture.

Spirent is the first test equipment vendor Verizon has named, extending the relationship the two have for CDMA and 3G testing gear. However, VZW said it expects to announce additional test vendors, which would give its developers more flexibility in calibrating and certifying their devices. The deal includes Spirent’s hardware, test and system simulators and software. While Verizon will use the test platform itself, the bigger opportunity for Spirent is with device developers who will need to use Spirent’s test gear if they want to submit their hardware to VZW’s certification program.

Verizon Wireless has been very aggressive in encouraging a device and application ecosystem to ensure it has something to sell its customers when the new network launches. Verizon will have one of the first---if not the first—large scale LTE networks in the world, meaning it will be well ahead of the development curve for handsets and next-generation data devices, and it also has specific radio requirements many LTE operators won’t have: VZW is deploying over 700 MHz, which is a foreign band outside of North American, and will need its devices to have dual-band support for CDMA as well as LTE. To encourage that ecosystem Verizon launched its 4G Device Developers Program more than a year ago with the aim of giving of manufacturers an early lead on designing the handsets, embedded consumer electronics and M2M modules it hopes will one day populate the network.

Despite those efforts, Verizon isn’t expecting a flood of LTE gadgets the day the network goes live. In a recent interview VZW executive director of LTE ecosystem development said that Verizon will start off conservatively, using the 4G network to relieve its 3G network of high-consumption applications such as mobile broadband access.  “The first set of devices are going to be dongles, which will be with the types of data plans customers are already used to,” Higgins said.

The first handsets won’t be available until 2011, but even when they are, Verizon doesn’t plan to pursue smartphones that aggressively, Higgins said. The 3G network is capable of handling most applications a smartphone can throw at it, Higgins added. The capacity and the efficiency of the LTE network, though, will open the door for a whole generation of devices and applications, many of which VZW and its partners are just beginning to contemplate, Higgins said.