Verizon plans to launch fixed broadband LTE service before the end of the year, said Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo on the company’s earnings call last week. The offering will be packaged with an antenna that the company tested a year ago with DirecTV and will be offered nationwide, Shammo said.
The news has some interesting implications.
According to DSL Reports, the Verizon/DirecTV fixed LTE trial supported downstream speeds of 27 Mb/s and upstream speeds of 5 Mb/s. That could make it a strong contender against DSL, depending how it is priced.
It would seem to be a simple matter for Verizon to support voice along with the fixed broadband LTE service. And considering that DirecTV was part of the original trial, a potential partnership with the satellite provider could comprise the third piece of a triple-play offering.
If Verizon and other large carriers are successful at getting their way in Universal Service reforms expected later this week, potentially the fixed broadband LTE offering could even qualify for Universal Service subsidies under the new broadband program.
A fixed LTE offering also would seem to have strong appeal to Verizon’s rural LTE partners (CP: Verizon now has seven rural LTE partners, vindicating McAdams’ vision), which now have reached a dozen.
That’s great… so now what? They abandon the fiber deployment and we end up with cellular carriers in a bandwidth war and so called “unlimited” data plans at the houses until they can no longer supply the demand due to limited radio spectrum and then we all get screwed and throttled back. I can’t believe they are backing off fiber and pursuing this instead. Fools!