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Verizon promises 4G for every American

Verizon has promised to connect up the whole of America with 4G technology based on LTE, at 700MHz, belittling Sprint's WiMAX efforts on the same day that Telefonica demonstrated the first LTE calls and Nokia finally gave up on WiMAX. Verizon built itself a national spectrum holding during the 700Mhz auctions, and CTO Tony …

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Steve Todd
Coat

Title mis-type?

Should that not read "for EVERY American" not "for Very American"?

Anonymous Coward
Stop

Shouldn't that be 'every' American?

Unless I'm missing an obvious joke. ;)

Peter D'Hoye
Dead Vulture

For very American

yes, very very American way of talking...

aL
Dead Vulture

Very american

very american indeed

(title spelling error for those of you that dont get it)

Andus McCoatover
Coat

Nokia and WiMAX call it a day?!?!

Now I know why I got the boot from Nokia Siemens Networks in August 2007 - I was slated to train the WiMAX Flexi basestation/infrastructure to Sprint, et al.....

Plot thickens. Or more accurately congeals. Was it a decision already in the pipeline, me wonders??

Anyone got more on this WiMAX "departure" from Nokia??

Coat, 'cos we don't have a black bin liner icon. Yet.

Kevin Campbell
Boffin

not so fast there, bub...

[pedant] "sniffily compared the technology to Betamax, and consigned it to a similar fate."

O'Rly? If you will do the slightest research, you will find that most agree Betamax was actually a SUPERIOR format to VHS (at least on NTSC - don't know if PAL results would have been different). The reason it died was due to Sony's greed and idiotic marketing, not because Panasonic's format was better.* [/pedant]

* Yes, I am aware of the myriad other reasons Beta failed such as lack of pr0n, etc. I am speaking here strictly to the author's implication that Betamax was inferior.

Anonymous Coward
Paris Hilton

Hmmm

Any chance that Verizon might wish to extend its service provision to the UK?

Anonymous Coward
Thumb Down

Just get off your duff

And lay some fiber in my neighbourhood and forget all this tomfoolery. I can't even get DSL from you numpties and you're talking this up?

Eddy Ito
Pirate

Dear Verizon, sod off

All for the low, low price of 199.99 / month; just sign up for an 8 year contract* and you're good.

*a cancellation fee of $50,000 will apply.

Rob
Go

@Kevin

Glad you pointed it out to, saved me the trouble and yes it was still superior on PAL as well.

So superior in fact that Beta was used for a lot longer in the Broadcast industry years after the consumer version had died.

Rasczak

Betamax /VHS

@ Kevin Campbell

Wasn't VHS a JVC invention rather than Panasonic, or are they all part of the great Matsushita corporation ?

In the UK it was rental that helped kill Betamax, lots of people hired their TV rather than bought it, so they hired a video recorder as well. JVC got in with the rental companies so rentals were mostly, if not exclusively VHS. Those that bought a video got the same as those that rented so they could swap tapes, the rest.......

@ Rob

I thought broadcast used U-Matic rather than Betamax. Of course Betamax was based on the U-Matic format, just smaller cassettes. I remember the U-Matic machines we used at college with 30 minute tapes that were about the size that a netbook is today.

Terry
Boffin

@AC

Right you are. I am at least as big a techno nerd as anyone else. But damnnnn folks, our cart is rotting in the field while the horse dun runed away.

It would be really cool if my phone would work inside my house. Somehow I find their promise of "4G for all of America" somewhat dubious.

It will be Star Trek techno-heaven where the CEO lives, (Irving TX I think).

It will likely work reasonably acceptably in select medium sized markets.

In big cities it will be so overloaded as to be non-functional, isn't that the beauty of CDMA - unlimited number of simultaneous users?

In small markets or rural areas it will be just like 2G, and 3G, and 8G -- non existent. These talking heads always choose to forget that "America" is not just the city in which the big wig lives.

c

get the facts right

"Sprint's WiMAX network runs at around 2.5GHz, which means lots of bandwidth but short range, which in turn means densely packed base stations. Operating at 700MHz should allow Verizon to roll out much faster, and at less cost, but the low frequency means less data, or fewer customers per base station."

Bollocks. There is no difference in the bandwidth provided nor the number of uses per base station between 700Mhz and 2.5 Ghz. None. If you were talking 70 MHz vs. 2.5 GHz then you may have a point but not this time. El Reg is supposed to be technically competent - I wonder sometimes....

Anonymous Coward
Alert

The Landline Cow Is Nearly Dead

So how are they going to afford to pay for this vapor 4G network?

They've vamped the poor sods still on copper till they are dropping like flies (3.3%/yr-- or maybe that is /qtr?-- last I heard), and fiber rollout is dog slow. In the meantime, many copper customers defect to cable since Verizon simply doesn't have a clue and won't even extend fiber drops to get DSL to the nooks and crannies to retain customers that need broadband. It must be cheaper to lure the customers back using cheap rates? Oh no, someone said the 4G is 199.99 a month with an 8 year contract! Probably with one of the infamous clauses saying using it too much on one cell site means it is a landline 'replacement', not a wireless line, and violates the contract (do not pass GO, must pay termination fee of 50K...).

Instead Verizon buys spectrum to provide "4G" which might better be known as "4Godot" at the rate they put it out.

While landlines may eventually go away, Verizon needs them for now since there is no feasible way to get really good wide wireless coverage in the near future. You would think the c-suite would fight a rear guard action in the landline arena, but no... if Napoleon had the Verizon rear guard attitude, Napoleon would have died in the snow outside Moscow with a peasant pitchfork through his heart.

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