In case you were wondering, the answer to the question of whether or not Verizon will have a smartphone with LTE inside by the end of this year is no. What about tablets? Still no. During the Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference, Verizon Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer John Killian had a few choice statements to make:
“We are in the middle of our initial rollout of 4G, which will become commercial in the fourth quarter.”
“20% of our base has a smartphone today.”
Tim Horan, an analyst with Oppenheimer, asks: “And with your premium network out there and with LTE coming out, do you think you have the ability to charge premium
prices for the higher speed?”John responds: “We do.”
“As we roll out LTE, the speed of our data network will be somewhere in the range of 8X to 10X what it is today in terms of that. There are people out there who think it can be even higher. We will be a little conservative and put probably in the 8 to 10 range of an improvement in speed with LTE. So we will reach 100 million of the population by the end of this year, and then in 2011 and 2012 — by the end of 2012 we will substantially cover the entire country. We think that’s going to put us in a great position. We’re going to build very high-quality LTE networks.”
“You will not see smartphone devices with LTE before Christmas. but, you will see them in the first half of next year. What we will have in the fourth quarter is dongles and aircards for broadband access, basically, but we are very confident that smartphones will be available in the first half of next year.”
Tim asks: “How about the tablet type device?”
John responds: “Look, we are working on — we haven’t announced anything from a tablet perspective. We’re working hard with a couple of different manufacturers on tablet devices. We will have some news there in the not-too-distant future.”
“Verizon Wireless is a 10-year-old partnership. It’s 55% owned and controlled by Verizon and 45% owned by Vodafone. We’ve had a partnership that has worked very well over the last 10 years. You know, we have publicly said in the past — so no new news here — we have publicly said in the past that if Vodafone wanted to sell, under the right conditions we would be interested in that.”
“This is the first time in a number of years where we’re investing more in wireless than in the wireline business. I would expect that to continue the next couple of years at about the rate we are spending today.”
Count me as someone who is eagerly awaiting the launch of Verizon’s LTE network. From a technical standpoint, as in wanting to know what it’s capable of doing, especially compared to what’s already out there in Sweden and Norway, to a business angle, as in knowing how Verizon is going to price the service, this is easily one of the most exciting pieces of news of 2010.
That or free bumpers for all, haven’t quite decided yet.