Verizon has the largest LTE network in the United States. There’s no question about that as Verizon is about to cover two-thirds of the U.S. population with expansion to 230 markets, significantly more than AT&T’s small but fast LTE network and orders of magnitude beyond Sprint’s nascent new 4G. However, Verizon wants to expand further and tried to accomplish this through a deal with several cable companies to cross license technology and services to gain valuable AWS (1700MHz) spectrum to build out further LTE. Verizon didn’t get far in this venture though, because T-Mobile, Sprint, and DirecTV filed a claim with the FCC to stop this deal from going through. Today, Verizon has responded with a solution to the complaint.
Verizon will sell off portions of its own 700 MHz spectrum (albeit the A and B blocks, which it does not currently use), most significantly parts in metropolitan areas, if the FCC approves the deal with the cable companies.
The spectrum crunch is quickly approaching with Verizon at the helm, and I can’t help but to question what the consequences will be. Sprint has already given up WiMAX in favor of LTE, which it plans to continue deploying on its mostly defunct iDEN network it inherited from the merger with Nextel eons ago. With heavy data usage on smartphones quickly becoming the norm, how will carriers keep up with the need for bigger pipelines, more widespread tower coverage, and heavy congestion especially in cities?
The spectrum wars are only beginning.
[…] one data plan between a tablet, smartphone, and wireless hotspot, or between family members. As the spectrum wars continue, this is Verizon’s way of securing their assets and ensuring their network does not get […]