Verizon Ends Fixed LTE Trials With DirecTV

Could this have really worked anyway? LTE is limited to metro areas (right now anyway) where there are usually at least options of cable, DSL and sometimes fiber. All of which are faster connections, well except DSL in most cases. Why would someone switch the the LTE alternative that would most likely have very low caps? I could see this maybe working once the LTE build-out has a footprint the size of the current EVDO coverage. But even then most of the areas that would serve already have seemingly better alternatives.

However, if Verizon would someday offer a single data package to cover all my smartphones plus my house at a decent price and without absurd caps I'd be all over it.

What's a non-absurd cap? If it's somewhere between 10GB and 250GB who knows? Verizon will now have ~40 MHz of spectrum to play with on that front, plus fiber to the tower, so competing with fixed-line broadband is very doable, particularly compared to many, if not most, current DSL deployments.

Sure it could have. Verizon already has cell service in these rural areas. And the LTE is on a different frequency. Pop in an LTE antenna and base station with a decent backhaul (which they already have because of 3G) and poof, you have rural LTE.

I bet the contract was this: We'll sell you our spectrum on the condition that you abandon your stuff with our biggest competitor, DirecTV. I think that explains it better. Why else would you partner with a company that provides something you want to offer. Why would I go from Comcast to LTE for Internet? Makes no sense. In the rural areas you could offer service to people that have no option.

Another example of rural market goes by the way side and the metro areas are a bigger cash cow. This could have been good for areas that does not have other choices, but here we see the same old story of the rural areas playing second fiddle. Sounds like the old Wimax letdown.

Exactly. AT&T has been pissing on us rural customers for a long time, and now Verizon is doing the same. AT&T refuses to provide most of its rural customers with any semblance of DSL, so many of us had been hoping that Verizon would come out with a better priced, much higher capped LTE service, but that idea is gone. Comcast is doing no better, by only offering digital cable and no internet access.

On top of all of this, the aging telephone system is showing how much of a failure AT&T really is. My phone line has been down all day, with a horrible squelching sound and a dead line. AT&T tells me that is might be, possibly fixed by, Saturday, hopefully. Either the 50 year old system has finally died, someone has wrecked into the closest junction box, or someone is stealing copper.

Either way, we are now without home phone service, AT&T Wireless does not dare offer proper wireless coverage(though Verizon does), so we are completely without a means of communications. This is not to mean it is "the end of the world", I am just pissed off that I am without something I am paying for, and these huge companies, which all take loads of money from me, refuse to offer me a solutions for proper, stable internet access that the rest of the metro Atlanta Area has.

I am tired of listening to the talk, and reading "bold words" on random internet sites. I want a company to come out here, and all of the other rural areas, and start offering us the services that we have been supporting for the urban and suburban areas for many years. It is time that a good portion of our money come back to serve us, rather than people that are already over-served.

Didn't he just promise a fixed LTE offering later this year about a month ago?

Doesn't mean that DirecTV has to be involved.

Verizon is not the only wireless or LTE offering in town. Knowing both DirecTV and at&t as well as I do, I'd almost bet there are talks beginning of a renewed strengthening of their current relationships, just guessing...

I currently live in a rural area where the only internet option other than dial up is a company that provide wireless service. $70 bucks a month for 368 kb up and 1500 kb down. This provider rarely delivers the advertised speeds either. Home LTE would have been like a dream come true.

But you'd have to be able to get an LTE signal for it to work. LTE won't be in rural areas for quite some time.

Then what's Verizon's LTE In Rural America program for?

PR I expect, My DSL costs Me $22.83 a month and I'm not interested in paying more than that for LaTE and never seen in Rural Area Territory.

Must be nice to spend $22.83 on internet service...

hell it wont 30 minutes outside of international city for a long time.

I too would have been very very very interested in LTE home service.

I actually just got an LTE signal at my home in a semi-rural area -- western WI, about 35 minutes east of St Paul, MN. Verizon recently expanded LTE coverage in the Minneapolis/St Paul area and now it reaches farther out of the metro. I agree that it will take a while for Verizon to roll out service to far-out rural areas, but they keep expanding coverage around metros and it is starting to edge out into rural areas...it won't take that long.

I have no other good options, no DSL (AT&T doesn't care and hasn't expanded their DSL footprint outside of town in ages), no cable, no WISP. Only sat or cell broadband.

So I am just waiting for them to offer service with a reasonable cap and I will sign up immediately. 5GB is way too low for a service of that speed. 10GB is also unreasonable for a primary Internet connection at home, especially at $80/month.

You know its only upto speeds on fixed wireless and dsl you never will get the advertised speed. People needs to start learning everything is upto speeds you NEVER will get the advertised speeds.

I beg to differ, I get more then the advertised speeds on my FiOS connection 24/7/365. Its just the people on the legacy networks that don't get there advertised speeds most of the time especially during peak evening hours.

Fiber to the home is not only better it's in a different league than other technologies.
If the U. S. Of A. had a real national broadband plan it's goal would be to bring the availability of affordable fiber to 95%+ of our homes. We can't even imagine all the ways such infrastructure could improve our lives in the future but I won't be surprised if it is close to the difference made by either electricity or indoor plumbing.

The cantenna is a small LTE tower.
It would have given rural areas true high speed net and unmatched cell services. Each cantenna acts like a small cell tower. I would have loved it because hughes net stinks.

Also FTTH is not as great as you think. After 13 years in the communications and cable industry the best is FTTC (Fiber to the curb)pipeline and then coax to the home.
FTTH has limets because of cost and size.
Coax not so much.

If Verizon had done it I would have changed everything for them.

I would have to disagree because I have FTTH and I dont get anywhere near my 7 meg package I only get 6.5 out 7 meg.

This is from my isp "We set the policers to 5 meg plus 30% which is what we are required to run at on our Ultra High Speed Package" "Most ISP providers throttle their customers download/upload speeds to less than a ¼ of their overall bandwidth speeds."

"Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam to reporters: Will not go ahead with DirecTV LTE trials, will go with Comcast instead. 'We can't do both,'"

Sounds like code for "Comcast/TWCable/etc. as a condition of spectrum use, has prevented us from going forward with our plans with DirecTV."

More proof that the ones with the biggest pockets get what they want.

Didn't he just promise a fixed LTE offering later this year about a month ago?

Yes, out of one side of his mouth.

"We'll give connections to people that already have it, poo on everyone else."

once urban areas have dozens of options for internet (as they have now) you have to go somewhere else for subs ... how bout us folks in rural ... we have money, we can buy service if it is offered.

Why do all the providers insist on starting things in areas with TONS of competition already in place? They attempt to claim i'm rural, yet all the towers in the area are being hammered by the so called rural populace.. Can't say there is a bandwidth hog, not with throttling and low ass caps (even with unlimited your throttled after 5 gigs).

What the heck is wrong with people? Are colleges churning out retards to lead us? My god no wonder china is doing circles around us :-/

I was really hoping on this as an option. The T1 really is over-rated, and this would have been a great option. I am just on the edge of LTE. Considering a month ago, Verizon was saying they would be offering Direct-TV installed fixed LTE, its hard to say how long until Verizon changes their tune. I would suspect that Verizon will eventually work out a deal to use the cable companies installers to do something similiar to what Directv was going to offer. Verizon has made it no secret that they intend to go back into the areas that they sold off the land lines and get that revenue back via wireless/LTE.

With DirecTV, people would love to have fixed LTE, and it makes perfect sense for the bundle.

With cable, why would anyone want fixed LTE? If we're talking about mobile LTE, then how's that a cent different from what Verizon Wireless would be selling on their own, as opposed to the Comcast bundling? Different branding? Are they kidding?

Seems like they're replacing apples with oranges.

Obviously the real parts to the agreement aren't being shared yet. So what we know is that Verizon bought some frequency above the LTE bands. Comcast does have a network of towers out there, and in theory I would assume they are also fiber fed off of Comcasts network. Was part of this deal also that Comcast becomes Verizon's backhaul provided for their LTE network. Without something like that, there would be no way that Verizon and LTE can coompete against Docsis 3.0 and 50-100mb service.