Vodafone chief: Verizon needs LTE before we do
BusinessWeek recently engaged Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin in an interesting, lively, and positively revealing interview about his company's 4G prospects, Android, and its marriage to Verizon, among other juicy morsels. The whole transcript is a good read, but we were particularly interested about his comments about LTE, the GSMA-adopted roadmap to 4G for GSM carriers. Despite the presumption that Vodafone would be moving to LTE alongside virtually everyone else, Sarin is careful to note that the company has not committed to it yet; they're still concerned about some intellectual property and technical issues, so they're steering clear of signing their names on the dotted line for the time being. He also says that partner Verizon is in more desperate, immediate need of LTE than it is, because EV-DO can't scale up to near-4G speeds to bridge the G gap the same way HSPA can. Either way, though, he says that Voda will be rolling out LTE in the 2011-2012 time frame, and that "for nobody is it an experience before 2010" -- so what difference does a year make, really?[Via mocoNews]
Filed under: Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, LTE
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Danny @ Apr 16th 2008 12:55PM
Did he really say Verizon was more "desperate," then they were or was that simply the way you interpreted it?
bdsams @ Apr 16th 2008 3:16PM
Im happy they think Verizon is their priority but...
Verizon's EVDO rev A currently trumps ATT 3G ( which btw isnt nearly as close to being widespread as EVDO is)
SO why the desperation? Verizon is already beating its current competition for speed
Navi Thach @ Apr 16th 2008 3:18PM
AT&T's HSDPA can burst to 7.2 MBPs, while Verizon and Sprint can hit 3.6 MBps. But AT&T still uses EDGE in most of the US, while Verizon has nearly complete EVDO coverage.
Tor Slettnes @ Apr 16th 2008 3:58PM
Not my experience! (SF Bay Area)
I had Verizon until about a year ago, and got a max download speed of aproximately 1 Mpbs.
With AT&T/HSDPA, depending on location and time of day, I can get well over 2 Mbps. (Both on my previous Motorola RAZR v3xx and my current Nokia N95).
One of my coworkers, using Sprint, will also get speeds up to around 2 Mbps.
In either case, the real world speeds of all these carriers are well below their theoretical limits (3.6 Mbps, 7.2 Mbps..)
zephxiii @ Apr 16th 2008 4:13PM
Actually, you are wrong. According to dslreports "fastest domain" statistics, both sprint and AT&T (mycingular and mmode) beat verzion in average speed, and have been. Also AT&T's 3g network is growing all the time, even my little crap town in indiana is getting it within months.
Another concern is how UMTS/HSPA works, that 5mhz paired (minimum) channel is for data and voice, and can dynamically balance spectrum between voice and data, not wasting any...start stacking those channels up (which ATT intends on doing) and.....nice!
elgee02 @ Apr 16th 2008 5:18PM
zephxii provide a link or I call bull. Here in the high desert of California my Rev A card gets an average of 1.7-2.2 Mbps on the download according to speedtest.net. AT&T doesn't even have 3G here at all.
Navi Thach @ Apr 17th 2008 3:39PM
like I said, CAN. It's too bad that the teeny boppers on Verizon sap BBA with VCast so they can download Panic At the Disco and Fall Out Boy.
zephxiii @ Apr 16th 2008 6:26PM
booya: http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed?domains=1
bernardino @ Apr 18th 2008 2:12AM
AT&T FTW!
athousandleaves @ Apr 16th 2008 9:20PM
you guys really need to stop using that picture... dude looks like a vampire or something...