Unfiltered

As part of an otherwise fairly by-the-book groundbreaking ceremony for its new Boston area 60,000 square foot LTE innovation center, Verizon Wireless CTO Dick Lynch did drop a bit of an update by targeting VZW’s launch of LTE in 25 to 30 markets in the fourth quarter. That launch will beat the opening of the innovation center itself, expected to open sometime in 2011.

Sidecut Reports had this:

Lynch said that Verizon’s LTE testing in Boston and Seattle is now complete, and that the company will test systems with friendly users (usually company employees and other partners) during the third quarter of 2010. “In the fourth quarter, we’ll be turning on [commercial] markets as planned,” Lynch said, confirming that the stated goal of 25 to 30 markets covering a population of 100 million people is still the target Verizon intends to hit. To our knowledge, this is the first time Verizon has publicly stated exactly when LTE services might be available.

Connected Planet’s take,
Kevin Fitchard:

Narrowing the commercial launch window from the second half of the year to the fourth quarter may not seem like big news, but I bet Clearwire, Sprint and the WiMax cable MVNOs are breathing a sigh of relief. They get at least an extra three months to get more networks launched, rev up their marketing and customer acquisition efforts and generally establish them as 4G mainstays before Verizon bursts onto the scene with LTE.

Clearwire aims to nearly quadruple its footprint by the end of the year and launch WiMax in key metro markets such as NYC and San Francisco. It’s just a question of when the launches will come. So far its only launched in Houston in the first four months of 2010. If its service launches are packed toward the end of the year like its 2009 launches were, it gains little advantage. From the way VZW’s plans seem to be shaping up, it plans to flip the switch on a bunch of markets all at once, rather than launch incrementally like Clearwire. VZW basically has given itself three months to go live in 25 to 30 markets covering 100 million pops.

Ultimately a few months or half-a-year lead won’t make much of difference when it come to selling the core 4G service, mobile broadband access. 4G is still a foreign concept to most Americans, and both Clearwire and VZW will have to educate the public on what exactly mobile broadband entails. If anything having two 4G — or when you factor in the MVNOs, three or four — marketing mobile broadband in the same market will probably raise awareness of 4G for everybody. Clearwire, Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner certainly aren’t going to be able to come in and sell millions of broadband subscriptions in just a few months (Clearwire’s total WiMax net adds including wholesale was 450K in 2009). While Clearwire may have entrenched itself in some of its initial markets like Atlanta, most of its so-called time to market advantage is probably moot.

The handset is another story. Sprint will start selling the EVO 4G Android smartphone this summer, and the smartphone is a concept the public is widely familiar with. Thanks largely to Verizon and T-Mobile, the Android OS is a known and sought-after platform. Sprint just has to make the points that its 4G network is a lot faster and supports more high-bandwidth apps like video. Sprint will also have a much more meaningful head start on the handset front. Verizon’s LTE launch may be pushed to Q4, but that won’t affect the availability of LTE-CDMA handsets, which won’t happen until sometime in 2010. Samsung is producing a LTE handset for MetroPCS that it claims will be out by the end of the year, but my bet is we won’t see much else beyond LTE laptop dongles until the latter half of 2011. If there is a big WiMax opportunity for Sprint, it lies with that handset. It needs to sell the hell out of them this summer.

That’s our take on this. Let us know what you think in the comments section below:

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