I'm anxious to see WiMAX available in my neighborhood, too but...

A lot of wishful thinking on your part, Frank. Actually, LYE fits like a glove with VZ's fiber expansion. Items 2 thru 4 are rendered mostly irrelevant by the proliferation of Corning's less expensive, easier to install optics.

Items 1 and 5 are respectively erroneous and ridiculous.

But hang in there, maybe we'll see both technologies overlapping, therefy offering consumers a choice.

I realize that's just wishful thinking too.

OK, can you provide some numbers to back your comments such as:

1. What percentage of VZ cell towers worldwide are currently (DEC 07) fiber connected? 5%? 10%? Note: I'm a happy VZ subscriber here in Denver.
2. What is the pricing VZ is paying for their "less expensive" Corning optics? What does that translate to in terms of a cost per subscriber for VZ? Is it $1,000 per sub? $2,000 per sub? On what date can we expect all those base stations to be serviced by those new optics? I think if you dig into this you might find that VZ is probably looking more at wireless backhaul to support their base stations rather than fiber. Its considerably less expensive than fiber.
3. What's VZ's VoIP plan look like? 5ESS and DMS's don't do voIP (or at least not without a few hundred million in upgrades). If LTE is shipping 2010, they'd need to get their trials going now. We're just not seeing the press releases on the few hundred millions of $ of Sonus or other switching gear.
4. Got IPTV partner? There goes a few hundred million $ more in video infrastructure. Again, if we're to see some HDTV IPTV from VZ in 2010, we should be seeing a flurry of press releases on infrastructure deals to support it. Otherwise, all VZ will be offering via LTE is faster email to the handset.

In short, VZ like their competitors, is doing a good job of being 1999 cell phone company, I'm just not convinced the share holders are going to be happy come 2010.

I think the key part of the Verizon announcement is that they are going with LTE instead of UMB. With Sprint going Wimax and Verizon going LTE I think UMB is pretty much a dead technology choice.

Thanks for your Blog. Keep up the good work.

1. Independent of which technology you choose on the air-interface the problems on the backhaul, i.e. matching the data rates is the same. You can either do it with new fiber, existing fiber or wireless (which SN is doing for WiMAX).
2. They have a EV-DO network which can be deployed with VoIP long before LTE or WiMAX can offer it.
3. WiMAX has huge issues today with supporting VoIP, independent of the switch. The control channel overheads required to support VoIP for WiMAX, brings it to its knees. (BTW, these issues are glossed over by the WiMAX community)
4. WiMAX has to be deployed with 30 MHz, i.e. Reuse-3, 10 MHz TDD for the system. If you can get 2-3 Mbps average rates with 30 MHz, all VzW has to do is to add one more EVDO carrier and software upgrade to EVDO-RevB and they can compete with WiMAX with the same rates and mind you in 5 MHz total spectrum as opposed to 30 MHz. They do not need LTE to compete with SN.

The WiMAX and 3G Evolutions/ LTE debate is not new. Nevertheless there can not be one technology which can be deemed as superior without specifying a range of factors such as rural/ suburban or urban usage, type of applications and user densities. Mobile WiMAX or WiMAX is capable of providing wireless overlays in rural areas and this has been also one its early application. WiMAX also classes of service which provide more reliable deliveries of Video or VoIP, which at present can not be matched by any competing technology. The MBS multicast feature of mobile WiMAX can deliver streaming multicast services to hundreds of thousands of customers. At the same time HSPA or LTEs enjoy the legacy advatage of incremental capex over existing 3G networks and the ready targeting of a large base of customers under the 3G (UMTS or CDMA) technologies. Neverthless it can not overcome the basic architectural weakness of the 3G as of today. Hence the advantage that these networks enjoy may be more fickle than believed.
Amitabh Kumar
www.wimax-home.com

The WiMAX v LTE discussion bores me a bit just now. First, which WiMAX are you discussing? Everyone in the WiMAX camp talks like its deployed, so I assume it's the 16d or 16e variants. So then why are you comparing it to LTE? 16d and 16e are not 'mobile' in that they don't actually do proper handovers - they are being deployed on a different basis to that which LTE will be and as a result will not be competing directly for the same market or at least not on the same service set.

But then if what you want to do apples to apples, then you need to reference 16m and compare that to LTE - but then the claimed WiMAX market lead vanishes, so we don't see many WiMAX advocates actually making that point.

The other thing about this posting is it is very North American focussed. I did nearly fall off my chair at the 'how many Verizon Wireless masts worldwide...' question - count the ones in the US and you're done. So can we get real for a bit?

LTE is being defined by 3GPP, home of UMTS and HSPA. UMTS didn't quite deliver on expectations but HSPA is selling like hot cakes - Telstra announced they are rolling out a nationwide, 21Mbps HSDPA network by the end of 2008, Mobilkom in Austria are already at 14.4Mbps. All those lucky networks that went UMTS when the last great water shed took place between UMTS and CDMA-2000 (for that you can read practically everyone except a few operators in US including VzW, and a small handful in Japan and one or two others) now have a rather nice stop gap solution using HSPA to go through 3.6Mbps to 42Mbps when the MIMO variant comes out.

So why has VzW gone LTE? Because they need to do something that is going to give them a future network, they can't go HSPA (because they didn't go UMTS), they don't trust EV-DO, they don't fancy being hamstrung by Qualcomm on UMB and they don't believe the WiMAX mobility hype. Meanwhile, everyone that did go UMTS is moving to HSPA (including AT&T, and soon T-Mo US) and those markets where 3G licenses are only just being issued (Brazil, India, China - so not insignificant) you will find a lot of operators jump straight to HSPA and skip the UMTS step. Why go HSPA at all? because it is operational now, it has a huge roaming infrastructure behind and, shockingly enough, it is the natural fore runner to LTE.

There are 700+ GSM networks in the world, and they are all on the 3GPP evolution path that leads to LTE, but that path runs via HSPA. What you see in the Verizon decision to swap tracks and come into LTE, is one US operator joining the majority of the globe's chosen technology path. If you want to talk economy of scale, talk about 2.5billion GSM subscribers all heading in one direction.

with respect to the economies of scale comment by the obvious GSM camper.....you might ignored INTEL's committment in Wimax....2.5 Billion might seem like peanuts...when you see every laptop with a intel wimax chipset...boooYA...but again...time will tell