Verizon promises 4G wireless for rural America

The new 4G wireless broadband network that Verizon Wireless plans to launch in 2010 could be rural America's answer to its broadband access prayers. But extending the network to every nook and cranny in the U.S. will likely take years. Tony Melone, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Verizon Wireless, said during an interview at the CTIA Wireless 2009 tradeshow Wednesday that the new 4G network that the company is building will blanket the entire continental United States, including the far corners of rural America. "The licenses we bought in the 700MHz auction cover the whole U.S.," Melone said. "And we plan to roll out LTE throughout the entire country, including places where we don't offer our CDMA cell phone service today." If Verizon makes good on this promise, it will be helping to bridge a widening gap between broadband haves and have-nots in this country. While Verizon Wireless' parent company Verizon Communications and other broadband providers have concentrated on building wireline broadband infrastructure in densely populated areas, such as cities and sprawling suburbs, they have not done a good job of extending that infrastructure to rural America. The problem has been that building infrastructure for land-based broadband networks is expensive. And companies, such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast say they can't make profits by offering service in sparsely populated regions because the cost to build these networks is too high and the number of potential customers is too few. And even though the federal government has provided some $1.2 billion in loans aimed at helping operators in the private sector build broadband networks in remote areas, the money hasn't been stretched to reach every community.