...for PC cards and dongle devices. That's the easiest form factor, and it's the customer subset that can most benefit from the much faster speeds right way. After that we will follow with handsets.
During your keynote at Mobile World Congress, you outlined a road map for deploying LTE. Will the current economic environment affect those plans?
If by the current economic environment, you mean Verizon's current position relative to the rest of the world, then what we have announced [on Wednesday] is consistent with what we hope we can do in 2010. But I reserve the right to adjust that if things for Verizon get worse. If that were to happen, we may choose to adjust. But we are fairly bullish on our ability to do this.
Verizon announced the Open Device Initiative in late 2007, and you said during your keynote here that you think it has been a success. But I haven't seen any handsets announced, nor have I heard of any pricing plan for the service. So what's going on?
Most of the early devices on ODI have been unique devices that are focused on specific applications. There are a couple that are using the network for telemetry in unusual places, and some other specific devices such as specialised laptops.
What about the handsets? I think that when this initiative was announced most people thought Verizon was creating an environment where users could bring any handset to the Verizon network.
Well, it typically takes about 18 to 24 months to develop and take to market a new handset. So if you're looking for phones, it's too soon. The fact that there aren't many handset manufacturers that have gone through the ODI certification process is more a result of how much time it takes to deliver that product than it has to do with us.
Also, we really look at ODI as a non-traditional catalyst for developing new products and applications [rather] than another way of offering phone service. That will be part of it, but there will also be devices like blood-pressure monitors that use the network.
I think you're starting from the premise that ODI is all about the consumer handset market, and I'm starting at the point of looking at it as the future vision of wireless connectivity. Consumers might not yet be aware of devices that could connect to this network.
You have explained that on the Open Development network as well as on the new 4G LTE network you envision all kinds of devices being used instead of just handsets. How is that going to change your business model? You'll have to change or adapt the service plans, won't you?
I think in the future we will see data pricing based on usage. We don't expect customers who have a device that works once a week and pushes 50 bytes across the network to pay the same as a customer using 50MB a day. So the rate will be variable based upon usage. There will be a variety of pricing arrangements to allow for aggregation.
So you don't see wireless broadband services being offered like traditional broadband? For example, at home I pay for a single broadband connection and I can attach any device to it. And I can use as many devices as I want on my network.
No, I don't. The wireless network, unlike our fibre network, Fios, has a capacity issue. On fibre, the bandwidth is yours and you pay for it. But in wireless you have resource scarcity. So someone using 50 times more bandwidth than everyone is using should be expected to pay more. That's why I think there will be usage-based plans. But that doesn't mean we can't package services to get a single price for different devices. We're still working on the pricing.
