Verizon CEO: LTE Will Compete with Cable

[safan80]

In the pic he looks like he's on something

this will not happen because verizon wants to do bandwidth caps.

http://www.dailytech.com/Verizon+CEO...ticle20343.htm

Will contribute to cord cutting

Verizon Communication's CEO Ivan Seidenberg believes that his company's 4G LTE network could one day become a "modest substitute" for traditional cable and Internet, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Seidenberg had previously predicted the trend of cord-cutting -- eschewing wired cable TV in favor of Internet entertainment consumption -- to take hold. And, in fact, cable companies felt the loss of more than 500,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2010 alone. The cable companies deny cord-cutting is a growing trend.

While Seidenberg said that he doesn't predict an immediate consumer jump from wired internet services to Verizon's LTE, he did say that some will make the switch. Particularly because Verizon's LTE network can deliver comparable speeds to traditional wired cable Internet. However, Seidenberg made no mention of how Verizon's monthly data caps would affect the outcome of his predictions.

As for Verizon's wireline business, Seidenberg says he feels better about it now than he has in the last five years, thank to the company's investment in FiOS. He said that with the higher speeds FiOS can offer, Verizon is in a position to change the model for services, someday possibly delivering TV and Internet as a single service.

Seidenberg is set to retire in the second half of 2011, when Lowell McAdams will take over as Verizon's top executive.

[saaya]

LTE network could one day become a "modest substitute" for traditional cable and Internet

not quite what you put in the thread title :P

[zalbard]

It WILL compete. The title does not mention how competative it's going to be, though.
I'm looking forward to LTE. Pity WiMAX hasn't really taken off, both of these technologies are very promising.

[DeadlyFire]

Not with a 5 gig data cap they won't

[Serra]

In real terms, I think this is about as relevant as nVidia predicting the performance of the GPU's they will be releasing in 2020... and it's only that relevant because he used the word "modest".

[Russian]

In my opinion, if Verizon wanted to they could easily cut out the bottom tier[price] of cable subscribers as well as DSL. They could offer plans much like clearwire has where you can for one flat rate get data between your home and mobile for one low price. The problem, though, is that many of these companies do not want to invest enough money in their backhauls because that requires a heavy investment in infrastructure. This is why american mobile carriers have been throttling technologies like WiMax and LTE far below their theoretical maximums. The simple fact is that WiMax needs to deliver consumers better speeds if they want to compete with LTE and HSPA+ but even so, the speeds being delivered by LTE are sort of disappointing as well. I'm going to reserve judgment until VZN sends me a broadband card.

[Manicdan]

Not with a 5 gig data cap they won't

seriously
with my evo using just 3g speeds for high quality music it downloads 2x faster than it plays (on just 3g). so if i can use up 5-6GB a month due to something that could easily be 4x higher quality, i cant imaging how 5GB caps are going to survive

sure at first when the networks are new and 4g is a battery hog, people might now use it much and the network will be a ghost town. but down the road will they be able to handle 50 thousand people in a single city downloading netflix to watch on their TV (cause thats where i see this type of technology taking off)