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After more than a year of testing, Verizon Wireless today announced it will launch its fourth generation broadband cellular service, dubbed 4G LTE, on Sunday, Dec. 5, in 38 markets around the nation, including Boston.
Speaking from the new Verizon LTE and FiOS research offices in Waltham, Verizon Wireless officials specifically called out Washington and Boston as markets at launch. The service will be available in two pricing tiers - 5 Gigabytes per month for $50 or 10 GBs for $80 per month. At launch, Verizon Wireless will sell one USB modem for the service, the LG VL600. Within "a few weeks" the company will be offering a number of other USB modems for sale.
The first smartphones capable of 4G will be available by mid-year 2011, officials said, but didn't deny previous statements that LG phones would be available as early as February.
Verizon confirmed earlier this fall that Boston would get the 4G LTE service by the end of the year as one of Verizon's initial 30 markets.
Verizon has been testing its 4G technology in Boston and Seattle for more than a year. In late August, when Sprint Nextel Corp. launched its WiMax-based version of 4G, Verizon Wireless’ executive director for network technology Brian Higgins said that Boston would be one of the markets at launch of LTE to the public.
Sprint Nextel Corp. and Comcast Corp., along with Clearwire Corp., all launched their WiMax version of 4G in Boston at the end of August. Clearwire is providing the 4G backbone for both Sprint and Comcast in their deployments across the nation, which for Sprint and Clearwire now numbers at least 52 markets.
In September, MetroPCS launched the first consumer LTE service in the United States in Las Vegas. That service is available on just one phone from MetroPCS – a feature phone, not a smartphone. Verizon has said before that it will not offer an LTE phone right out of the gate, instead focusing on modems and other data products, just as Sprint and Clearwire did.
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