New Verizon LTE Innovation Center to Generate Devices; Carrier Ready for Commercial Launch

Verizon is building a new LTE innovation center that largely focuses on devices, Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said in an interview. Meanwhile, the carrier is going beyond LTE trials, targeting year-end for some commercial launches, he said.

"I expect some of the top consumer electronics companies in the world to work with us,” Lynch said. The company is looking at adapting wireless broadband to applications that “consumers haven’t even dreamed of yet,” he said. “We will facilitate any companies that want to produce new devices and applications for use on Verizon’s LTE network,” he said. The LTE R&D center, to be based in Waltham, Mass., will house more than 300 researchers and scientists from Verizon, its suppliers and future LTE partner companies, Lynch said. It’s an important hub of wireless technology and user trials, he said, with the main focus on devices, though the team will be working on various applications. One of Verizon’s LTE equipment partners, Alcatel-Lucent, has been providing additional resources to help Verizon facilitate and enable LTE devices, Lynch said.

Initial LTE attributes that will differentiate LTE from 3G would be speed and latency, Lynch said. The earliest applications on the LTE network would include PC cards for heavy data users and M2M devices, he said. He envisioned LTE-based cameras and LTE in cars to deliver information and entertainment. Many people think full penetration of mobile devices would be done once reaching a 100 percent penetration rate, but “I think we will pass 500 percent as a result of the kind of devices on LTE networks,” Lynch said. “It’s an IP-based infrastructure and broadband-based environment.” In the future, LTE Advanced is the next logical step for the company but it’s important to get the real products out to customers before moving to the next generation, Lynch said.

The carrier has reached a point where the trials have pretty much concluded, Lynch said. The next several phases would include some friendly-use trials and actual launches, he said. The company is still on track to launch 25-30 commercial LTE markets this year, he said. The technology chief underlined the importance of average LTE speeds rather than peak rates. Initial LTE services will see average downlink speeds of 5-12 Mbps and “I feel very comfortable with that,” Lynch said. The peak rates, about 40-60 Mbps, are nice to have but consumers don’t normally use those, he said. “I am passionate talking about speeds that are relevant to customers."

In addition to its LTE research, the center will house researchers working on wireline services like FiOS, Lynch said. Regarding the company’s plan to back away from further FiOS expansion, Lynch said the operator is coming to the end of its deployment plan, made five years ago. “We don’t want to make lots of additional commitments just yet until we finish deploying what we already promised to deploy and until we have penetrated the markets that we are already in,” he said. The company is focusing on expanding customers based in existing markets, he said.