Verizon’s next magic trick, 4G next year

Verizon, who has been working overtime to FUD WiMAX via the new Clearwire out of existence, seems to be a believer in the technology after  all. No, they are not adopting the technology for their own 4G use, but they have stated that their LTE service will appear magically out of thin air next year. If you’re Verizon, the best reason to claim you’ll have alledgedly better product to market quickly is to slow the take rate of your competitors offering. Naturally we will be here to document that miracle as it unfolds before our eyes, so stay tuned.

“We expect that LTE will actually be in service somewhere here in the U.S. probably this time next year,” said Dick Lynch, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Verizon Communications, in a speech at Cisco Systems‘ C-Scape conference in San Jose, California. That would represent a more aggressive timetable than many observers have expected for the high-speed data system, which has been pegged for initial deployments in 2010 and wide rollouts starting in 2011.

LTE is a fourth-generation wireless data system expected to be the next step up in speed and capacity for carriers using the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) platform, which is dominant in most of the world. Like WiMax, it should deliver multiple megabits per second of throughput. (Yahoo)

It’s amazing how much of the tech press and big tech blogs have run this story as the certain death of WiMAX. It’s true that Spint/Clearwire has had a bunch of trouble getting their network off of the ground, but they have and it’s working. There is still a big bunch of deploying ahead to build a national network. The rub with reporting Verizon’s LTE as a sure fire Clear wire killer is that Verizon has just as many obstacles ahead as Clearwire, and maybe a few more. The biggest unresolved issue is backhaul. It’s the main factor in slowing Clearwire’s progress, and Verizon has no bigger existing pipes to their towers. In fact the big V has struggled for years just to get much lower speed 3G service working. Then there is the underlying technology. WiMAX has had plenty of hiccups along the way to becoming a reality, but it is now in the wild and working as advertised. LTE is still in its infancy without a single working installation, and it’s silly to assume it will work perfectly in its first few generations. Then there’s the capital involved in getting a network built. Verizon is not likely to be able to raise as much money in the debt market as they have been able to in the past - no one is right now.

I’m not a WiMAX cheerleader per se. I hope both Wimax and LTE are up an running ASAP, and competing vigorously. What makes Clearwire’s WiMAX appealing today is its time to market, and it’s direct competitive stance against both mobile and fixed broadband. I’ll offer a crazed cheer to any company that will offer a potential third pipe, even one that’s only 2-4 MBPS. So if Verizon or LTE wants me to cheer, the can buy a big ad on Thirdpipe (like they do on the blogs that spread their FUD), or show me the bandwidth and actually deliver a working product before they ask me to declare a competitor “dead”.