| reply to Matt
Re: Good? said by Matt:said by en102:Until Apple builds an LTE/CDMA chipset, VZW will not be able to use an iPhone. Verizon's CEO Ivan Seidenberg has said that if an LTE iPhone is built it will work on ANY LTE network. He didn't mention that Apple would have to include CDMA for voice but rather noted that any device built for LTE would work on any LTE network in the world. en102 is correct.
For an iPhone to operate on VZW (or any LTE handset for that matter), it will need to support CDMA/LTE. Or more ideally--GSM/CDMA/LTE. Qualcomm and others are working on such chipsets. It's possible Mobile WiMAX support could be included in such multi-standard chipsets for multi-band devices.
New phones need to be backwards compatible with the older technology for quite a while for fallback support. And old wireless networks need to be supported quite some time as well, to support existing customers who haven't upgraded yet. AMPS and TDMA were only shut down last year here in the US. GSM and CDMA still have enormous numbers of customers, probably well over 100 million voice customers. It might be 2018 before they can seriously considering shutting down 2G. Although that doesn't preclude re-farming some of that spectrum for LTE.
Also for a LTE device to operate on a LTE network, it needs to support that particular band. Granted this is something of a "no duh." But it's important to note as LTE will be deployed in a number of different bands, including: 700 in US & 800 in Europe (former analogue TV), part of the 2500-2690 in Europe (Clearwire has much of this in US), 1700/2100 (AWS in US), plus whatever re-farmed 2G/3G they can scrape together (850/900/1800/1900/2100). Most early devices will only support one band, it'll take some years to have multi band support.
said by Matt:said by en102:Yeah - VZW may have a problem supporting an LTE platform would need to fall back onto something else. That would kind of be like how AT&T Apple would be if there was no GSM to fall back onto. Yes and no. CDMA is in the 1800Mhz range, LTE will be in the 700MHz range. MUCH better propagation techniques and less towers required. I bet they'll have LTE covering a large percentage of their footprint VERY quickly. All spectrum have attributes/characteristics that give it particular advantages and disadvantages. 700 MHz does propagate farther, making it far more useful for rural areas. A single 700 MHz base station could cover as much as a 1000 square miles.
However it doesn't work like that in urban areas. You can't serve the entire LA or NYC metro with a single tower, for a whole number of reasons--including physics. You'll probably need just as many towers as higher frequency bands because of capacity reasons. And you'd have to de-tune each base station so they don't interfere with each other.
ATT and VZW bought some AWS spectrum some years back, which is currently lying fallow to my knowledge. They'll probably deploy LTE there as well as 700 MHz.
All that said, VZW is among the most aggressive carriers with LTE in the US and the world. They've made no secret they intend to eventually overbuild their existing CDMA/EvDO network, and then some. |
