IowaCowboyLost in the Supermarket Premium Member join:2010-10-16 Springfield, MA |
IowaAccording to the press release, they are lighting up LTE in Mason City and Charles City Iowa.
I have a friend who lives in Mason City.
They probably won't upgrade very rural areas that already have EVDO because they need to upgrade the physical backhaul to support the faster speeds. We have LTE here in Springfield (MA) but the speeds are not optimal for what can be offered by LTE due the backhaul. A wireline or wireless connection is only as good as the weakest link and if the last mile is FiOS but the central office only has a backhaul link only good enough for DSL, then you are only going to get DSL speeds. That is probably the reason why Verizon is reluctant to deploy FiOS in Western Mass because the area between the Pioneer Valley and the rest of their FiOS deployments is very rural. Once you go west of Worcester, the area is pretty rural and you don't see civilization until you get to Wilbraham and more towards Ludlow (Exit 7 on the Mass Pike) and there is no infrastructure to build off of in to the south since that is AT&T U-Verse territory (which is why I'd like AT&T to buy Verizon's Western Mass wireline assets for hopes of getting U-Verse someday to give Comcast a little real competition). I think the lack of FiOS has to do with the geography and service territories here. |