Vodafone CEO: Verizon likely to deploy LTE first

Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin indicated in an interview with BusinessWeek that its partly owned venture Verizon Wireless would likely have to upgrade before Vodafone because the company is "riding the 3.5G wave."

"We are headed [toward LTE]. But we want to get a lot of the technical and standards and intellectual-property rights issues resolved before we say we are ready to sign up for it. Frankly, in this particular instance we have a great advantage. We have deployed something called HSDPA [High-Speed Downlink Packet Access] which is 3.5G. So if you said there is no technology available to you before 2012, we at Vodafone are completely relaxed because we are riding the 3.5-generation wave," Sarin said. "In fact our affiliate here in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, will need the fourth-generation wave faster than we do."

Is that really the case? Simply put, Verizon now has the spectrum in the 700 MHz band to deploy LTE. Vodafone has to ride the 3.5G wave until it has enough spectrum to deploy LTE. And EV-DO Rev. A appears to be running on all cylinders for Verizon Wireless.

For more on Sarin's 3.5G reasoning:
- read the whole interview [1] over at BusinessWeek 

Related articles:
- 700 MHz winners reveal plans, no big surprises Report on 700 MHz auction [2]
- Verizon Wireless to trial and deploy LTE Report on Verizon's LTE plans [3]