Verizon looking to partner up for rural LTE deployments
If you're wondering why T-Mobile doesn't have 3G in the middle of the Mojave, the answer's pretty simple: it's hard for any of the Big Four to justify spending millions of dollars on infrastructure in sparsely-populated areas. Rather than ignore it and leave the spectrum blank, though, Verizon's asking other companies to step in and share the responsibilities -- sort of -- by letting partners do most of the hard work (build towers and operate backhaul) while Big Red chips in its 700MHz spectrum holdings and "core LTE equipment." Presumably, Verizon will help itself to a share of the proceeds, which from their perspective, makes it look like a win-win scenario: they're helping to bring 4G technology to underserved areas, doing less work and spending less capital than they'd have to otherwise, and profiting off the spirit of an initiative that FCC chief Julius Genachowski is pushing very, very hard at the moment. And hey, we bet you'll be getting some insane throughput when you're rocking the LTE modem in the middle of nowhere
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: backhaul, companies, engadget, getting-some, middle, perspective, pretty-simple, spending-less, Spirit, underserved
TeliaSonera already upgrading LTE network, ‘practical speeds’ of up to 80Mbps promised
There's no rest for the wicked -- and perhaps nothing in the world of wireless describes "wicked" better than Nordic carrier TeliaSonera , which holds the distinction of having deployed the world's first commercial LTE network last year. Thing is, the network's been taking a little heat for being effectively no faster than some of the recent HSPA+ deployments around the globe, but no worries -- they're already working on it
Categories: Mobile Phone Tags: 100mbps, backhaul, Carrier, distinction, engadget, engadget-mobile, extra-bandwidth, globe, mobile, sweden, upgrade, world
AT&T announces slew of network investments for 2010
AT&T's preaching about the mucho dinero it's dropping into renovating its network to pretty much anyone who'll listen these days, and a veritable cornucopia of press releases this week start to go into detail on some of the upgrades we'll be seeing over the course of 2010. We're counting at least a dozen here, covering everything from New York City to Florida to Oklahoma, but the message is basically the same in every one: more cell sites, more 3G coverage, more backhaul.
Categories: Mobile Phone, nexus one Tags: airwaves, announces-slew, backhaul, expansion, Fingers, finish-the-year, florida, its-nine-figure, liberally-pimps, network, nexus one, nexus-ones, over-the-course, press-releases, renovating-its
T-Mobile lighting up tons of fiber-powered backhaul ‘within the next few weeks’
Realistically, most Americans won't have a chance to enjoy the full spoils of T-Mobile's shiny new 21Mbps HSPA+ network any time soon, but hey, at least they appear to be making solid progress. In a recent chat with GigaOM , T-Mobile's VP of engineering Dave Mayo has said that the requisite software for HSPA+ service is already rolled out to cell sites along the California coast and in major cities between Washington, DC and Boston, but like AT&T , it's not the software that's the concern -- it's the width of the backhaul pipe. The company says that it's got 20Mbps fiber connections to just 7 percent of its cells presently but plans to rapidly expand that to around 25 percent "within the next few weeks." Ultimately, that's going to be the key for every carrier around the world that's deploying 3.75 to 4G networks -- the cells themselves might be easy, but getting enough data piped to them is another story altogether.
Categories: Mobile Phone, Other Tags: backhaul, california, cities, engadget-mobile, Fiber, gigaom, realistically, spoils