Verizon: In the game of 4G, spectrum trumps technology

Verizon Wireless has seen the future of cellular networking — and it doesn’t look much different from today. In a highly detailed, yet heavily redacted, filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Verizon claimed that the only possible way to create bandwidth- and capacity- intensive mobile broadband is to keep building big-tower macro-cellular networks.

To do that it needs more spectrum, and if it doesn’t get that spectrum, Verizon stated, it will start running out of LTE capacity by 2013. What happens in 2013? In areas where Verizon only has 700 MHz, spectrum congestion will reach a point where customers’ data speeds will suffer, and it may no longer be able to maintain the 5-Mbps threshold it defines as 4G. In areas where Verizon already owns AWS licenses, primarily in the eastern U.S., Verizon will have built more capacity, but even in those regions customers will see their service start to suffer by 2015.