Verizon plans to go much faster and wider than people expect, which dovetails nicely with the stimulus plans to build wireless towers almost everywhere. Verizon/Vodafone currently covers 274M of the 305M Americans, and Dick Lynch' intends to reach many of the remaining 30M. He's promising aggressive deployment throughout Verizon Wireless' entire network, including areas not currently covered by the existing Verizon Wireless footprint. Verizon has 22 MHz of spectrum across the country, which would yield 40-50 megabit shared service by industry rules of thumb. That corresponds to Lynch's note they hit peaks of 50-60 Mbps. Lynch was honest about this, mentioning the 8 Mbps but specifically saying he won't know average speeds until deployment is wide.
Serious commercial deployment is planned for 2010, with forecasts for most of the country covered and high customer volumes in 2012-2013. Verizon noted a cost structure significantly below current levels, although the initial prices are expected to be high.
The incoming team knows that wireless towers throughout are the best single way to create jobs. Tower builders are ready to go (really.) It's mostly domestic steel, concrete and labor. Without the stimulus, few additional towers were set to be built, so it will be almost entirely incremental spending.
Verizon will deploy almost as fast as possible, without subsidy. That's typical of wireless networks, where the carriers usually will roll out as quickly and widely as practical. In addition, the upgrades to existing towers are mostly equipment produced abroad.
Wireless towers are sensible for the stimulus; wireless upgrades yield surprisingly few jobs. Similar is true on the wireline side. Upgrades (cable DOCSIS 3.0, telco DSL including fiber to the node) are mostly equipment and not labor. Only in extreme rural areas does anything except a new fiber build add significant jobs. The Czar will have enormous political problems focusing stimulus spending on incremental job creation, because the carriers will be demanding to be paid for what they would build anyway. Congress got this wrong, not making a distinction between what creates new jobs and what doesn't.
Germany and Britain are headed down a similar path of giving the money to the companies without getting much additional buildout and few jobs. There's a lot of window dressing like Britain's 2 megabits to everyone but when I run the numbers BT is demanding rate increases, toll booths and subsidy far greater than the cost of serving the customers with $200 repeaters. I'm not sure the new Minister, Stephen Carter, realizes the broadband in his "Digital Britain" plan is essentially a BT bailout. That may be the right policy - BT lost a $B+ on Global Services, and has a pension deficit so large they are afraid to calculate it under some return assumptions.
