Mike Haberman, vice president of network engineering for Verizon Wireless, told Fierce Wireless that the wireless carrier is “very pleased” with the performance of their LTE network.
Haberman confirmed that 50 percent of the carrier’s network traffic is now carried by the company’s 4G LTE network. This is up from the 35 percent the carrier reported back in October 2012. Much of this shift is due to an increasing number of customers buying 4G LTE phones. Speaking at CES, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that 23 percent of Verizon’s customer base now owns an LTE phone, a 7 percentage point increase from the 16 percent reported at the end of Q3 2012.
Verizon operates the largest 4G LTE network int he US. It’s coverage blankets 273.5 million people and 89 percent of the carrier’s current 3G footprint. Verizon expects to cover its entire network with 4G LTE by the end of the year. Looking beyond this year, the carrier said it will optimize its network using AWS and additional 700MHz spectrum . Eventually all of its 850MHz spectrum, now used for 3G, will be converted to 4G, but it will take several years to transition all of its voice services and all of its phones off of its legacy 3G network.
[Via Fierce Wireless]