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Verizon to fulfill 4G promise to rural Americans?
By: cnn.comPosted On: 05/14/2010 10:55 A
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Verizon Wireless could make good on its promise to get 4G wireless broadband to rural America.
Verizon Wireless could make good on its promise to get 4G wireless broadband to rural America.
The nation's largest wireless provider is in talks with rural wireless operators to expand its 4G network to consumers in hard to reach areas of the country, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Verizon is building its next-generation wireless network using $4.7 billion worth of spectrum it acquired in the Federal Communication Commission's 700MHz auction in 2008. Using a technology called Long Term Evolution, or LTE, the carrier hopes to be in 25 to 30 markets by the end of this year.
Verizon hasn't yet begun offering its service commercially, but it has tested it. A recent speed test conducted by the company in Boston recorded download speeds of 8.5Mbps. The uplink speed was about 2.8Mpbs. This is in line with Verizon's promise of speeds between 5 and 12 Mbps downstream.
Verizon executives had promised a year ago to get the 4G wireless broadband service to rural America. Tony Melone, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Verizon Wireless, told CNET during an interview at the 2009 CTIA tradeshow that Verizon's 4G network would blanket the entire continental United States, including the far corners of rural America.
"The licenses we bought in the 700MHz auction cover the whole U.S.," Melone said in the interview. "And we plan to roll out LTE throughout the entire country, including places where we don't offer our CDMA cell phone service today."
Melone didn't provide details of how Verizon would accomplish this goal, but the agreements with rural carriers might be one way to achieve this.
Verizon Wireless chief executive Lowell McAdam told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that Verizon is still negotiating the deal with rural providers. But he offered a few details of what the deals might look like.
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