Verizon Wireless Launches Faster New Wireless Broadband Network
Verizon Wireless Enhances Wireless Broadband Network with EV-DO Revision A Technology — Media Contact Info — BASKING RIDGE, NJ — Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless provider, today announced it is launching …
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon Wireless spent 2006 building the demand side of mobile data before supplying the speed: it first allowed subscribers to use several phones as high-speed laptop modems in February 2006, then layered on consumer services like its music store and the roughly $20-a-month Chaperone kid-tracking offering. Those moves assumed an EV-DO pipe that was adequate but not fast.
First-order effects
- Subscribers who already treat Verizon phones and PC cards as laptop modems get higher throughput immediately, making tethered broadband more usable for the road-warrior segment Verizon courted in 2006.
- Verizon gains a headline network claim over rival carriers still on earlier EV-DO revisions, useful in both consumer marketing and enterprise mobility sales.
Second-order effects
- A faster revision forces a hardware refresh cycle: customers on older cards and handsets need Rev A-capable devices to see the new speeds, pulling revenue toward modem and handset vendors aligned with Verizon's roadmap.
- Data-hungry add-on services in Verizon's own portfolio — tethering plans and subscription offerings priced above voice — become cheaper to deliver, improving the margin case for pushing data plans over voice bundles.
Third-order effects
- If carriers keep upgrading data capacity ahead of demand, the industry's profit center migrates from per-minute voice to metered and bundled broadband access, with network revision cadence becoming the competitive clock rather than handset lineups.
- Sustained spectrum-and-infrastructure spending of this kind raises the capital bar for national coverage, favoring the largest carriers and pressuring regional players into roaming dependence — though how far that consolidation runs is genuinely uncertain from here.
The trend: US carriers are converting licensed cellular capacity into a general-purpose broadband business, with each EV-DO-style revision narrowing the gap between mobile and fixed-line internet.