Verizon Admits Network Faces Traffic Pressure in Big Cities

Roger Cheng, reporting for CNet:

The carrier said it is facing pressure to deliver increased amounts of bandwidth in big cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. In a rare admission on Tuesday, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo admitted the rapid growth in traffic was starting to hamper the quality of the service.

“There are certain pockets where we’re absolutely going to experience that down tick from the LTE network down to 3G because of capacity constraints,” Shammo said during an investor conference.

I was in New York yesterday, and saw this firsthand. Verizon LTE has gone to shit in Midtown Manhattan.

Update: On Twitter, reader Rory Berger reports, “I work in Midtown East and I turn off LTE all day. Verizon 3G is much more reliable (although still shit).”

And Carl Peluso asks an intriguing question: “Is Verizon finally feeling the pressure of iPhone on their network like AT&T in past, or is that [an] invalid issue nowadays?”

Put another way: How much of the pressure on Verizon’s LTE network in these big cities is from the iPhone in particular?

★ Wednesday, 13 November 2013