Verizon is turning to filling in gaps and expanding capacity with more spectrum, Mike Haberman, Verizon Wireless's vice president of network operations said.
That includes introducing a new, intelligent, home-based LTE base station that you can plug in if your own Verizon coverage isn't quite good enough.
"It acts as an LTE base station inside your house," Haberman said in a statement. "The thing will go into your house and sort of situate itself. It will figure out its environment-it's seld-optimizing, and we can manage that well."
The new LTE network extender, arriving in the "short-term future," isn't a robot. It's just an LTE hotspot that plugs into your home broadband and projects it out as LTE signal for both high-quality voice and data, as long as your Verizon phones support Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE). Verizon currently offers a 3G-only network extender for $249.99, but it's gone in and out of stock over time.
The next phase of Verizon's LTE strategy also involves turning more wireless spectrum over to the faster network, a process known as refarming.
Verizon has switched some 1900Mhz spectrum over from its older EV-DO network to LTE in New York City, Cleveland, and about 10 other markets, Haberman said in a statement.
That process will accelerate as more people move to LTE devices.
The 1900Mhz, or PCS spectrum, will be the first to go because it's devoted to EV-DO, which is a data network.
Much of Verizon's 850Mhz holdings are devoted to 1xRTT voice, which most LTE phones still need to make phone calls.
