{"id":418,"date":"2014-12-05T10:19:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T18:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmtechblog.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2014-12-05T10:19:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T18:19:26","slug":"verizon-is-transitioning-3g-spectrum-to-lte-in-10-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"Verizon is transitioning 3G spectrum to LTE in 10 cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years after Verizon launched\u00a0its first 4G\u00a0network, the company is starting to cannibalize\u00a0its existing 3G network to repurpose the spectrum for its third LTE network. According to Mike Haberman, vice president of network operations, Verizon is rolling out LTE on its PCS bands, formerly used for EV-DO, in 10 markets.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cIn Manhattan, PCS is up with LTE. It puts us in even a better situation, because you\u2019ve got another 10\u00d710 block out there right now,\u201d Haberman\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Although Haberman\u00a0didn\u2019t reveal what other cities will see their PCS bands transition to LTE, the change has already\u00a0been\u00a0spotted\u00a0in\u00a0Manhattan\u00a0and Cleveland, Ohio. As usage on Verizon\u2019s EV-DO network decreases because\u00a0users upgrade to new phones, it\u2019s a foregone conclusion that Verizon will repurpose its\u00a0spectrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirtually all our devices now are 4G LTE. We do sell a lot of phones and people tend to upgrade their phones fairly often,\u201dHaberman\u00a0said. \u201cIf you see\u00a0Apple\u2019s complete lineup, it\u2019s all 4G.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Verizon can\u2019t fully shut down its 3G networks\u00a0yet \u2014 not everyone has a new smartphone that supports LTE \u2014 but 80 percent of Verizon\u2019s data traffic already runs on LTE. And as Verizon moves its voice and text traffic over to the IP network, it will be able to start shutting down its 2G capacity as well. Haberman pointed out that it only takes 2.5 MHz of spectrum to keep a minimal 2G network online. So there\u2019s plenty of\u00a0spectrum that can\u00a0be reclaimed.<\/p>\n

Verizon has committed to support EV-DO\u00a0until at least December 31, 2019, Haberman\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Verizon is also currently testing carrier aggregation, an LTE Advanced feature that will allow Verizon to combine\u00a0the transmissions of its LTE networks together, and Haberman\u00a0expects devices that support it to make their way to the U.S. next year. (This year, Samsung sold a special version of the Galaxy S5 that\u00a0supports carrier aggregation in Korea.) AT&T turned on carrier aggregation earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Carrier aggregation won\u2019t let Verizon combine all three of its 4G networks into one super-network, at least not yet. But it will allow Verizon to bond a lower capacity system \u2014 like the\u00a0emerging LTE network on PCS \u2014 with the \u00a0high-capacity \u201cXLTE\u201d network it launched last year. That will result\u00a0much faster peak\u00a0download speeds for its customers.<\/p>\n

Source-\u00a0gigaom<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four years after Verizon launched\u00a0its first 4G\u00a0network, the company is starting to cannibalize\u00a0its existing 3G network to repurpose the spectrum for its third LTE network. According to Mike Haberman, vice president of network operations, Verizon is rolling out LTE on its PCS bands, formerly used for EV-DO, in 10 markets. \u201cIn Manhattan, PCS is up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","tag-verizon","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmtech.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}