Updated: Verizon taps LTE for 4G, citing scale, global harmonization

Unlike its previous network decisions, Lynch said, Verizon Wireless could not think of its own network and devices in isolation. Consumer electronics manufacturers and third-party applications providers will play a huge role in the next generation of networks, Lynch said, so it was critical Verizon adopt a technology the global carrier community could embrace and around which device makers would coalesce.

“If the next generation is going to be OFDM, we want it to be a single OFDM,” Lynch said.

The trials in the U.S. will most likely be conducted over Verizon Wireless’s Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum in the 1.9 GHz and 2.1 GHz frequencies, meaning it will have to be a frequency division duplexing deployment, splitting the uplink and downlink transmissions over separate bands. Verizon Wireless also plans to bid in the 700 MHz auction this January. The range of those frequencies would make them ideal for a new broadband network, but that spectrum won’t be cleared of its public broadcaster incumbents in time for the trials, Lynch said.

The only other U.S. operator to announce a 4G strategy is Sprint, which also left the CDMA evolution path, picking WiMAX rather than LTE. That leaves both major CDMA operators in the U.S. on a network evolutionary path other than the one promoted by the 3GPP2 (CDMA’s standards body). Traditionally CDMA operators and GSM operators have stuck to the technology migration paths laid out by their respective standards bodies. Both Sprint and Verizon Wireless followed the 3GPP2 from CDMAOne to CDMA2000 1x to 1x EV-DO, just as GSM operators went the 3GPP route with GPRS, EGDE and finally UMTS and its high-speed packet access (HSPA) iterations. The reasons weren’t loyalty but rather ease of upgrade from one technology to the other.

But 4G represents a massive disruption point in both network paths. The transition from 3G to 4G requires an entirely new radio access network and IP core as well as new spectrum and devices. That presents operators with the choice of diverging from their allotted paths or switching to a different path altogether, and operators in the CDMA camp are definitely electing to change course.

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