Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent have won the contract for Verizon Wireless’ planned LTE network. Nortel Networks? Nowhere in the mix.
Executive Vice President and CTO Richard Lynch announced the suppliers for the carrier’s LTE network at his keynote at Mobile World Congress. While early buzz had bankrupt Nortel a contender for the contract – the vendor was conducting field trials for Verizon – the chips fell in a different way.
There’s no word on exactly how much the contracts are worth, but suffice it to say that for vendors, the nationwide overbuild for a high-speed broadband wireless network is a welcome feast in times of famine.
Despite Verizon’s earlier stated goal that it will be commercial with LTE later this year, Lynch said the plans have been slightly delayed thanks to the shift from analog television to DTV being postponed to June 12 – Verizon will use the vacated spectrum for LTE. The carrier will instead start trials in two U.S. cities this year, with a national commercial launch in 2010.
"Together we think we can make up most of the delay, but if there's ... any delay after that, I think it will push the launch out," Lynch said.
While ALU and Ericsson will provide the radio access portion of the picture, Starent Networks Corp. will deliver the packet core for the network. Meanwhile, Nokia Siemens Networks and ALU will supply IMS components, with the goal of enabling rich multimedia across Verizon’s wired and wireless networks.
“The key loser is Nortel, which seems to have suffered from poor timing,” Steven Hartley and Julien Grivolas, analysts at Ovum Ltd., in a brief. “It has a relationship with Verizon Wireless and a strong technology offering in this space. However, Verizon Wireless is clearly looking for a long-term relationship and entering Chapter 11 protection is certainly not conducive to that.”
Ericsson also has been selected to do LTE for Telia Sonera, while this is a first LTE deal for Alcatel-Lucent. ALU has struggled with the merger of Lucent and Alcatel, and last year was forced to reorganize, and made the decision to cut out its WiMAX business and focus instead on LTE.
“Ericsson’s involvement is interesting as it has not worked with Verizon Wireless in the past,” said Hartley and Grivolas. “Today’s success suggests that Vodafone’s influence may be at play. [Vodafone] CEO Vittorio Colao has emphasized that global coordination will be key moving forward and this may be a first sign.”
Verizon is a first mover in LTE for the U.S. market. AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA are also in the process of deciding vendors for their respective LTE builds, expected to be commercial in 2010, but no solid announcements are expected anytime soon.
