* Verizon ups mobile ante
In recent months, the mobile WAN carriers have been one-upping each other on a regular basis – a competitive climate that bodes well for business customers.
Most recently, Verizon Wireless said its high-speed BroadbandAccess data service would be available in 14 U.S. markets covering 34 million people beginning last week. That’s up from two markets – San Diego and Washington, D.C. – for the CDMA EV-DO-based, 300K- to 500K-bit/sec service, which is burstable to 2M bit/sec.
The service has been expanded to include Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Baltimore; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Milwaukee; New York; Philadelphia; Tampa, Fla.; and West Palm Beach, Fla.
It is also being made available in 24 airports. (Let the 3G – Wi-Fi turf wars begin!)
The expected expansion comes on the heels of AT&T Wireless adding coverage to its fledgling 220K- to 320K-bit/sec UMTS network, which is now available in Dallas, Detroit, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle and is burstable to 384K bit/sec.
At this juncture, if your users might be traveling anywhere throughout the U.S., you should still probably be comparing the Verizon EV-DO service with EDGE services from AT&T Wireless or its soon-to-be-parent, Cingular Wireless. Both have nationwide EDGE networks that run at slower speeds (100K to 130K bit/sec), but reach many more places (about 7,500 cities and towns) than the UMTS or the EV-DO service.
A big advantage that Verizon Wireless has at the moment, though, is that BroadbandAccess is backward compatible with Verizon’s nationwide 60K- to 80K-bit/sec NationalAccess 1XRTT-based data service. So if you roam out of EV-DO territory, you automatically fall back to 1XRTT speeds.
AT&T Wireless’ UMTS service, on the other hand, is not backward compatible with EDGE – at least not yet. Rather, out-of-region UMTS roamers fall back to older GPRS services (at a piddling 20K to 40K bit/sec).
So the question is whether existing EDGE customers – likely power data users – would be willing to give up full nationwide coverage at 130K bit/sec in return for three times the speed, but become limited to 14 markets (Verizon EV-DO) or for twice the speed but become limited to six markets (AT&T UMTS). My guess is they’ll stay put for the moment.
Next time: What about Sprint PCS?
