Philly and SF seen in Verizon's first 4G wave

A new scoop has revealed that the first wave of Verizon's 4G rollout should touch Philadelphia and San Francisco. The two pinpointed by BGR would be some of the largest among the 30 cities due to get LTE networks by the end of the year and support beliefs that Verizon is targeting the largest cities first. Others mentioned in the past have included Atlanta and New York City.

The rollout takes a very different approach than that of Sprint and Clear, whose WiMAX-based 4G networks had much lower-key introductions that started in just a handful of cities with significantly less reach, such as Baltimore. Verizon will both have to compete against those services and try to lure customers looking for improvements in network quality. As a technology hub, San Francisco would potentially attract customers eager to upgrade from 3G or who have network problems with their existing service.

The 12Mbps service will have relatively slow expansion but could cover as much as three quarters of Verizon's existing map by April 2012, and all of the carrier's 3G map by 2013. Most of the initial devices will be modems and routers, but 4G phones and tablets should appear by early 2011 with LTE for the data link.

By Electronista Staff