Verizon plans on a full deployment of LTE by 2010, utilizing the newly acquired 700 mHz spectrum. Trials are already under way, with 3 markets set to start real-life tests sometime in the second half of this year.
No pricing plans were set, and no specifics were mentioned of actual data download speeds; rather, Verizon CTO Richard Lynch would only say that the real speeds would not be known until the real-world tests are made. Peak trial speeds have been set at 60 Mbps so far. Two lucky to-be-named cities will be recipients of the 4G action — which sounds suspiciously similar to Sprint and Clearwire’s current WiMAX situation — where the company will get a better sense of the data rates commercial users can expect.
From the other hand AT&T is in no hurry to deploy LTE since it is very careful on how it deploys HSPA, which is slow to evolve enough as it is. AT&T will observe Verizon’s rollout of LTE and learn from any mistakes made from it, so as to avoid making the same mistakes on its own rollout.
NetworkWorld: Verizon conforms details of US LTE deployment.
Carriers in India have already drawn up plans for deployment of more than 14.9 million Class 4 NGN ports and over 4.1 million Class 5 NGN lines, making it one of the top Nextgen Voice markets over the coming few years. In majority of the cases, vendors have already been finalized. The findings came as a major surprise while I was researching the subject. My impression was that VoIP in India was limited to certain small PC-to-Phone offerings only. I started my research some two months back with the intention of finding out why the carriers in India were not serious about NGN voice. I was proven wrong. There are tenders floating all around in the country.
The IP phone market is going to split into two different paths. One is going to sell lots of business desktop handsets while consumers move into “media phones.”