Yesterday we scoffed a bit at Verizon's insistence that they will have their 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) up and running in just one year, but during his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today Verizon's CTO Dick Lynch confirmed again that they plan to make LTE available in 2010.
During the speech, Lynch revealed that Verizon will be teaming up with Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, and Starent Networks to deploy the network, and said that they will be able to launch LTE in two test markets by the end of this year. An 25-30 additional markets will then launch in 2010, and Lynch estimates that Verizon is aiming for "nationwide deployment" by 2015.
In addition to his discussion of Verizon's plans for LTE, Lynch had this to say about the technology:
"Verizon Wireless' LTE network deployment will be driven by our vision of providing ubiquitous global wireless broadband connectivity and mobility. LTE enables us to continue to meet business customers' demands for a higher bandwidth, low-latency service that works broadly in the United States and globally, while helping us to meet consumer demand for mobilizing the many applications they frequently use when tethered to high-bandwidth wired networks."
LTE (and Verizon) supporters will be thrilled to hear of these details, but what will it mean for Clearwire and Sprint 4G? Clearwire currently offers their Clear WiMAX service in just two US markets, the same number of markets Verizon promises to have LTE available for very soon. Clearwire would be very wise to take Verizon's plans seriously and accelerate their own rollout plans to establish their service before Verizon gives everyone the choice between LTE and WiMAX.
