Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are Verizon Wireless’ chosen partners to provide 4G infrastructure in deals worth between USD3bn and USD5bn.
Verizon plans to test the 4G market in two US cities later this year before rolling out the technology to 2,530 cities in 2010. The mobile operator hopes to cover the whole of the US by 2015.
The deal is a blow to Nortel and Motorola, which failed to secure any of Verizon’s contracts.
Verizon intends to use the Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband technology for its 4G network. Operators around the world are also planning to use LTE, meaning Verizon customers will be able to use 4G bandwidth abroad.
LTE will offer much faster download speeds than current 3G technology. According to Verizon, tests show peak speeds to be around 60Mbps, although average speeds on the shared bandwidth will be much lower. Current technology only peaks at around 7.2Mbps and speeds between 400Kbps and 700Kbps are the norm.
"In the not-so-distant-future, any and all devices will have LTE embedded in them,? says Verizon CTO Dick Lynch.
StrategyEye's related categories: ISPs - Wired, 4G, Internet Backbone & IP Networks
StrategyEye's related companies: Verizon, Motorola, Nortel Networks Corp., Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson
