Verizon accelerating LTE, putting further pressure on Clearwire, WiMAX

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It appears Verizon isn’t going to grant Clearwire its two-year grace period to launch 4G unfettered in the US. Speaking at a Cisco conference in San Jose, Verizon Communications Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said that Verizon Wireless will have its first 4G networks rolled out by the end of 2009, while Clearwire is still in the midst of its nationwide WiMAX rollout. The acceleration of VZW’s timetable for long-term evolution (LTE) could put a serious kink in Clearwire’s plans to develop a market for its mobile broadband service without the pressure of competition.

Rolling out LTE in 2009 would push Verizon to the top of the list in terms of aggressive deployments, even challenging for the title of first-mover the likes of Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, which has traditionally rolled out new technology far ahead of its Western counterparts. Most analysts don’t expect the first LTE networks to go live until 2010 or 2011. Vendors like Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks claim they already have commercial LTE infrastructure and device chipsets ready to ship, and every vendor is now shipping UMTS gear that they say can be software-upgradeable to LTE in the future. But the LTE standard isn’t even finalized yet. The GSM community’s standards body, the 3GPP, has set specifications for LTE’s radio interface, which allows vendors to develop their equipment, but the final standard won’t be ready until March at the earliest.

Verizon Wireless has been conducting trials with its part-owner Vodafone in the US and Europe using multiple vendors’ equipment. After it acquired its LTE spectrum in the 700-MHz auction, Verizon said it would begin deploying equipment in the second half of 2009 in preparation for a 2010 launch. At the Cisco conference on Tuesday, Lynch said the first commercial networks would likely go live by the end of 2009. "We expect that LTE will actually be in service somewhere here in the US probably this time next year," he said at the conference, according to PC World.

That timing doesn’t put Verizon too far ahead of its original estimates, but nuance in this case is important. While Verizon has committed to deploying LTE, the carrier has made a point of stressing that all of the so-called 4G services being discussed today can be supported on VZW’s 3G EV-DO network. The decision to adopt LTE was not made on the basis of an immediate demand for more capacity but in order to harmonize Verizon’s future network path with the rest of the global carrier community and give vendors early notice to develop LTE products for the future, Lynch has said.