Verizon’s LTE juggernaut expands to 75% of population

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:48:19 +0000

On Thursday, Verizon Wireless will light up 34 more small cities and towns with LTE, bringing its 4G coverage to three-quarters of the U.S. population. The network will then be live in 371 markets, just 29 communities shy of its 2012 400-market goal.

Verizon also said it would expand its existing coverage on Thursday in 38 other market, and though it didn’t reveal an exact number of POPs covered, the U.S. Census pegs the current population at 314 million, meaning Verizon has placed at least 235 million people under its 4G umbrella. The carrier’s year-end target is 260 million POPs covered.

Verizon remains well ahead of the competition. AT&T has launched LTE in 51 markets. By its last official count AT&T was covering 74 million people, though it’s launched in several new cities since and plans to double its coverage by year-end. Sprint just rolled out its first five LTE regional clusters in July and plans to add a sixth city, Baltimore, by the end of August. It expects to have a 123 million people covered by the end of the year. T-Mobile won’t launch until 2013.

The new Verizon markets are: Hot Springs, Ark.; Redding, Calif.; Valdosta and Waycross, Ga.; Centralia and Danville, Ill.; Parsons, Salina and Topeka, Kan.; Alexandria and Monroe, La.; Pittsfield, Mass.; Battle Creek and Muskegon, Mich.; Mankato and Worthington, Minn.; Joplin and Sedalia, Mo.; Bismarck, Grand Forks and Minot, N.D.; Chillicothe, Ohio; Reading, Pa.; Aberdeen, S.D.; Laredo, Odessa and Texarkana, Texas; Brattleboro and White River Junction, Vt.; Charlottesville, Va.; Longview, Wash.; and Eau Claire, La Crosse and Manitowoc, Wis.

The markets in which Verizon has expanded its 4G coverage are: Los Angeles and Santa Barbara/Santa Maria, Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Macon/Warner Robins, Ga.; Bloomington, Champaign/Urbana, Decatur/Effingham and Springfield, Ill.; Elkhart, Ind.; Des Moines, Iowa City and Sioux City, Iowa; Dodge City, Garden City and Great Bend, Kan.; Lexington and Louisville, Ky.; New Orleans; Boston; Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.; Missoula, Mont.; Las Vegas; Manchester/Nashua, N.H.; Las Cruces, N.M.; New York City; Cincinnati; Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Salt Lake City/Ogden, Utah; Roanoke, Va.; Charleston, W.Va.; and Green Bay, Wis. Additional areas include: Little Rock, Ark., expanding into Batesville, Ark.; Tallahassee, Fla., expanding into Thomasville, Ga.; Burley, Idaho, expanding into Twin Falls, Idaho; Chicago, expanding into DeKalb, Ill.; and Cedar City, Utah, expanding into St. George, Utah.

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AT&T launches LTE service in San Francisco and New York City

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:20:33 +0000

AT&T has turned on its 4G LTE service in 11 new markets, including New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but that expansion may not be quite as large as it appears. The new commercial launches bring AT&T’s LTE coverage to 74 million people, just 4 million more than its end-of-2011 goal of 70 million. That means AT&T either is under-building its network in these new cities or it missed its 2011 target by a ways.

In New York, AT&T revealed LTE doesn’t cover all of Manhattan, which contains the densest concentration of wireless customers in the country, and is available in only parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. In San Francisco, AT&T said the network is limited to major traffic corridors and the downtown areas of the major Bay area downtowns. AT&T said the expansion in the Bay Area and New York are ongoing, but a quick look at AT&T’s LTE coverage map shows those two metro areas aren’t the only ones to get the partial-footprint treatment. For instance, in Chicago, AT&T has built LTE extensively throughout the northern half of city, downtown and the northern and western suburbs, but left a huge swath of the city’s south side and southern suburbs untouched.

In November, AT&T met its 2011 target of 15 markets, but when it announced plans to begin its rollout in New York, it revealed it was still short of its coverage goal of 70 million. AT&T now appears to have been way off. The LTE service went live Thursday in Austin, Texas; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Oakland,Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix; Raleigh, N.C.; San Diego, and San Jose, Calif., as well as NYC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Unless the coverage in those cities adds up to only 4 million pops, then AT&T is just completing its 2011 rollout five days into 2012.

AT&T's LTE footprint in Chicago (dark blue)

That’s not bad, considering the late start AT&T got off to. But it doesn’t help AT&T catch up to its archrival Verizon Wireless, which has already extended LTE coverage to more than 200 million pops, and is live in 190 cities and towns, compared to AT&T’s 26. What’s more, if AT&T continues its pattern of covering markets partially with LTE, it could find itself at huge competitive disadvantage in the key battleground cities of the U.S.

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Verizon’s LTE juggernaut expands to 75% of population

AT&T launches LTE service in San Francisco and New York City