Ina Fried

Verizon Wireless said that it will continue to strategically add a second band of spectrum, known as AWS, as it looks to keep up with demand on its LTE network.

CTO Nicola Palmer said that the carrier equipped more than 10,000 cell sites with AWS capability in 2013 and turned on the feature in more than 5,000 of the sites. The number of AWS-capable sited is likely to triple, Palmer said. The company isn’t equipping all sites in a city, instead adding the capability in areas of peak demand in all of the cities where it holds AWS spectrum licenses. The company also plans to begin routing phone calls over its LTE network. As for a talked-about mobile video service, Palmer noted the company tested the capability of broadcast video over LTE during the Super Bowl.

“We are anxious to bring that to market,” Palmer said. “The technology works. We have some other things to work out in terms of the models.” Palmer said Verizon also plans to be at the forefront of other so-called LTE advanced features such as carrier aggregation and heterogeneous networks, which bundle multiple types of spectrum for faster speeds.