VZW's Droid-proof network

Verizon Wireless may have found its answer to AT&T's iPhone with the Motorola Droid, its first open smartphone resulting from an 18-month collaboration with Google and a device it plans to market heavily. But while Verizon hopes to emulate its arch competitor's smartphone success with the iconic Apple iPhone, it doesn't anticipate inheriting any of AT&T's subsequent network problems.

Verizon officials said they believe its EV-DO 3G network has more than enough capacity, even if a deluge of new unlimited-data subscription suddenly flooded the network. “We're encouraging it,” said Arvin Singh, director of data sales for the Illinois-Wisconsin region for VZW. “We're anticipating the Droid will be a blockbuster, but we're not adding any new backhaul or new EV-DO carriers for the launch. We're not anticipating the network will take a hit on this.”

Singh said that Verizon long ago prepared its 3G network to handle these kinds of capacities. In most markets, Verizon Wireless has EV-DO Revision A running on three sectors per cell site, and in many congested areas it has deployed multiple EV-DO carriers. CDMA downlink channels are only 1.25 MHz wide, compared to the 5 MHz used by AT&T's HSPA network. But they support similar maximum capacity's (3.1 Mb/s for Rev. A compared to 3.6 Mb/s for HSPA). AT&T's 3G evolution path will widen that gap over the next two years, as it upgrades its base stations to 7.2 Mb/s HSPA. But for now VZW has an efficiency advantage, allowing it to support much more capacity over the same spectrum.

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