At the RBC Capital Markets North American Technology Summit yesterday in San Francisco Verizon CTO Dick Lynch gave investors some insight into his new role and how he will bring together the wireless and wireline entities at Verizon. Lynch, a long-time Verizon Wireless veteran was recently promoted to executive vice president and CTO of Verizon Communications. Here's a recap of some of Lynch's comments:
3G: 3G has been delivered and it's been a smashing success for us. We will continue to grow our 3G business for a long time to come. The application growth for 3G is in the early stages. We first introduced wide-area 3G in 2003 and now our upload speeds have been enhanced with Rev. A. We now have the upload speed for applications such as mobile VOIP, enhanced PTT capability and push-to-X video capability.
IMS: There are lots of definitions of convergence, converged products, converged networks and converged applications. IMS is the real deal. IMS and 3G will tie together disparate networks--wireless, landline, cable and enterprise to work seamlessly together.
4G: There's lots of posturing about 4G. I don't know what it is yet. The ITU hasn't defined 4G. It's not just higher bandwidth and faster speeds. It will have those attributes but 4G will be embedded broadband in all sorts of devices. Today we are just starting to see embedded modules in PDAs and laptops. 4G will do for portable consumer devices what 3G devices did for the enterprise.
WiMAX: There's a lot of buzz about this. It's just another air interface technology. WiMAX, LTE and UMB are essentially 4G wannabee technologies. They all use OFDM technology and perform the same way in the same amount of spectrum. Would I use WiMAX with Verizon? Possibly. If I had TDD spectrum. -Sue