Verizon CTO Talks FiOS and LTE

Verizon Communications CTO Dick Lynch talked about the company's broadband businesses yesterday at RBC Capital Markets' Technology, Media and Communications Conference in San Francisco.

"Verizon sees itself as one that has a singular focus on a superior broadband portfolio both from the landline and wireless side," said Lynch.

Verizon's fiber-based FiOS service competes with cable for both video and data customers. And on the mobile broadband front, Verizon is moving aggressively to deploy a long-term evolution (LTE) 4G network.

MSOs are betting on faster Internet speeds from DOCSIS 3.0 to help them compete with FiOS. Yesterday, Comcast announced it was rolling out its new DOCSIS 3.0-based wideband service in the Washington, D.C., metro area. (For more, click here. For more on DOCSIS 3.0, click here.)

But Verizon regularly challenges Comcast's claims of faster Internet speeds. FiOS already offers 50 Mbps downstream speeds.

"It's my view that FiOS is not to be supplanted by anything," said Lynch, who argued that cable companies who advertise 50 Mbps downstream speeds are sharing bandwidth "in a much more aggressive way than we do with FiOS. When you divide by the number of customers using (the cable service), it's a lot slower than that."

Mobile broadband

While cable is throwing its support behind Clearwire and WiMAX, Verizon plans to build America's first LTE network with two primary network vendors, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent. (For more on cable's mobile plans, click here. For Verizon's LTE announcement, click here.)

Yesterday, Lynch said: "We were lucky enough during the 700 MHz auction to acquire the only 10x10 MHz spectrum that was auctioned at that point in time. We are planning to deploy LTE at 700 MHz. Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent are ready and waiting for the shutdown of analog TV at 700 MHz next week."

After some testing, Verizon expects to begin deploying its LTE network in the fourth quarter of 2009. Lynch said LTE will have speeds of 5-12 Mbps, and "we're going to be able to supplant a good deal of fixed services as well as we deploy LTE because of improved speed, improved latency."

- Linda Hardesty

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