LTE--It’s not just VZW’s network, it’s Verizon’s

Throughout its short history, Verizon Communications has kept its wireline business separated from its wireless business. The reasons are in part financial—Verizon and Verizon Wireless may share the same name, but the latter is part-owned by Vodafone. But a substantial justification has been operational. Verizon and Verizon Wireless have functioned as two distinct networks with little overlap except for the occasional bundled service plan.

Last week, however, when the companies announced their plans to jointly pursue Long Term Evolution (LTE) as a next-generation network technology, the name on the press release didn’t have a ‘Wireless’ tacked to its end. Verizon Communications was the company that announced plans to build the new 4G network in the U.S. According to Verizon Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch, that wasn’t a typo, nor was it legalese for the benefit of regulators or Wall Street.

The 4G network will be the first that truly bridges Verizon’s wireline and wireless businesses, Lynch said. While the 3G network delivers high data speeds, they have never approached what Verizon was able to offer over its wireline networks, making EV-DO a distinctly mobile technology. The LTE network, however, will bring true broadband speeds, off of which Verizon can hang services it has always reserved for wireline, Lynch said.

“We don’t expect people are going to download [high-definition] video over the LTE network, but there will be other services that tightly integrate with FiOS,” Lynch said. “This is a Verizon ‘big picture’ decision. One of the reasons I made the move from Verizon Wireless to Verizon is because there is this belief that the future is about the converged network.”

Any close link between FiOS and 4G services may have to wait, though. Verizon is only conducting trials in 2008, and the first commercial LTE networks won’t be available until after the turn of the decade. And even then, the inevitable handset lag that follows new networks may not put devices capable of bridging fiber and wireless services into subscribers’ hands until 2012.

Verizon’s announcement on LTE is not meant to be a sign of an impending launch in the near future, Lynch said, but rather a signal to the handset and consumer electronics makers of the world that VZW will pursue 4G and will pursue it specifically with LTE technology. That gives those device and handset makers a commitment, which will allow them to gear up their own product development plans.

“4G is not about voice services,” Lynch said. “It’s not about light broadband services. It’s about high-speed IP data services.” The usual handful of phone makers won’t be driving the 4G market, he said; rather, hundreds of consumer electronics makers will take the lead. Unless Verizon and other carriers commit to one platform or another, the device makers won’t be able to coalesce around a specific standard, he said.

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