Verizon Signs 3-Year Fiber Deal With Corning Aimed at 5G Launch
With an eye on 5G, Verizon said it signed a three-year minimum purchase agreement to buy $1.05 billion worth of Corning fiber cable. That translates to as much as 12.4 million miles of fiber per year, from 2018 through 2020,…
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Verizon said in a Tuesday news release. “Verizon has been reinventing its network architecture around a next-generation fiber platform that will support all of the company’s businesses,” Verizon said. “This new architecture is designed to improve Verizon’s 4G LTE coverage, speed the deployment of 5G, and deliver high-speed broadband to homes and businesses of all sizes.” In an initial deployment, Verizon said it launched One Fiber in Boston last year with plans to invest $300 million over six years to deploy fiber throughout the city. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said on CNBC Tuesday that the deal is important as Verizon densifies its network through small cells. Verizon will launch 5G in 11 markets this summer, he said: “This is one of those where if you build it, they’ll come.” McAdam said an FCC proposal to speed wireless infrastructure deployment, teed up for a vote at the FCC Thursday (see 1703300060), is also critical. The proposed rules are “important to us,” he said. “It’s working with the communities to make sure that the conduits are available that facilitates the small-cell placement, that puts a shot clock on the amount of time before permits are approved in the municipalities; those sorts of things will help us move it forward.” Verizon has about 60,000 macro towers and 13,000 small cells now, McAdam said: “When we get rolling” in places like Boston “we’ll put 8,000, 10,000 small cells, literally the size of your hand.” The next networks will look very different from 4G and earlier networks, which were focused on capacity and throughput, he said. “Fifth generation is about those things, and we’re going to see 100 times faster throughput,” but also with much less latency, McAdam said. “The network will go out and come back and respond in less than the time it takes to blink your eye,” he said. “We’re going to see 10 times the battery life that we’ve seen in the past. That opens up a whole new set of applications.” But none of the changes is possible without fiber “deep in the network,” he said.