Enter LTE

It looks like Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) won't have the world's first commercial long-term evolution network. TeliaSonera beat VZW to the punch on Monday — by a long shot. I doubt Verizon cares much, though I'm sure it would have loved to include “world's first LTE network” in its marketing materials. What a Nordic operator does in two European capitals hardly affects its own national rollout plans beginning in the latter half of 2010, but I imagine VZW might be as surprised as I am that TeliaSonera was able to get a live network out so quickly.

Let's be honest. This is a wireless industry that has a rather casual attitude toward deadlines (much like a certain wireless industry reporter you might know). When the carrier and vendor bigwigs started talking LTE trials in 2009 and commercial launches, we were thinking we'd see LTE in 2011. That's what happened with 3G. That's what happened with WiMax. That's still what's happening with advanced services architectures like IP multimedia subsystem.

Of course, two commercial launches in the downtown cores of Oslo and Stockholm don't mean we're suddenly going to be steamrolled with LTE deployments worldwide. Apart from Scandinavia, most of Europe hasn't even allocated 4G spectrum yet. And the other two carriers vying for the world's first title, VZW and NTT DoCoMo (NYSE:DCM) have much more extensive initial rollout plans. But assuming TeliaSonera's vendors Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and Huawei didn't cut any corners to get their kit out so quickly, it looks like LTE might actually be a viable technology today.

The first commercial network doesn't just beget more commercial networks. It spurs on chipset and handset activity critical to making LTE a viable service rather than just an expensive science and real estate experiment. Samsung has already produced LTE-only USB dongles for the TeliaSonera launch, which it should have no trouble adapting for the 700 MHz frequencies of VZW's network. Handsets might still be a ways out, but knowing that there is at least one working device that targets LTE primary service, mobile broadband access, is waiting for the world's other LTE debutants has to be a huge relief.

E-mail me at kevin.fitchard@penton.com.