Having conducted LTE trials over the last 12 months with Vodafone and China Mobile, Dick Lynch the EVP and CTO for Verizon Wireless after the usual info on the network background which many were not familiar with, went on to make two big announcements.

The first was the Open Develop Initiative. The basic idea is to allow any device on the market to connect to the LTE network and to bridge the divide between the device manufacturers and the network operators. The Open Development Initiative should allow any application or device to connect to the service, as long as it doesn’t harm the network. The LTE Innovation Centre will provide device manufacturers with market analysis, product enablement, research data, prototyping and certification. This should speed up the number of devices available on LTE and will also help to build up a subscriber base quickly.

He then went on to announce the eagerly awaited contract for their LTE deployment.

IMS went to Alcatel-Lucent and NSN EPC went to Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Starent NetworksRAN went to Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson

This was excellent news for Alcatel-Lucent who reported losses for eight consecutive quarters. They are however the biggest CDMA kit supplier and so may have had superior handover capabilities between CDMA and LTE. In any case Ericsson did really well to get the RAN contract, where the competition was the stiffest. Nortel who is the incumbent supplier was cold shouldered.

Verizon expects to roll out after further trials take place this summer using the 700MHz from the digital dividend. Without naming the actual deployment locations, the Verizon CTO said that 20 to 30 markets in the US would have LTE coverage in 2010. After that, Verizon will look to provide coverage in the entire US by 2015.

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