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Verizon Communications Inc. says it plans to start building a new research center focused around 4G wireless Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. Verizon Wireless currently is piloting an LTE network deployment in parts of Boston. The new Verizon Technology Innovation Center will eventually house more than 300 scientists and researchers, officials said, most of whom are already working for Verizon in two exisitng buildings at that location, according to spokesman Phil Santoro.
"There will be some people brought in from other Verizon locations around the country,” he said.
The official groundbreaking ceremony is this Thursday, April 15, but the real construction won’t start for a few weeks, according to Santoro. “Major construction will begin in earnest in late spring, and within a year’s time we hope to be able to open the doors,” he said, but noted the company did not yet have an exact date for occupancy.
In addition to its LTE research, the new building will house researchers working on other Verizon offerings. “LTE is the major focus of that building, but there will also be other Verizon work going on, including the further development of FiOS,” Santoro said.
The campus at 117 West St. in Waltham will include three buildings once the new one is finished. In addition to the research space, it will house offices, as well as an executive briefing center, according to officials.
As of August 2009, Verizon had 10 LTE 4G cell sites running around Greater Boston in its pilot deployment. LTE wireless service is expected to provide up to 10 times the speed – or about 8 megabits per second – of current 3G services. In March, Verizon announced that in its pilot deployments it was seeing average speeds of between 5Mbps and 12Mbps on a download in real world use, with peaks as high as 50Mbps.
Starent Networks Corp. of Tewksbury, announced in August of last year that it was working with Verizon Wireless to help it test its LTE deployment in Boston. According to Jon Morgan, senior manager of solutions marketing for Cisco, which acquired Starent in October of 2009 for $2.9 billion, “The key is whether the average rate is really going to be (as high as 50Mbps). It is still a shared radio technology, and as you get more and more users on it, that rate is likely not to be closer to the high peak rate.”
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