By Today, Verizon’s announcing that they’re getting ready to announce the deployment of LTE in 10 major West Virginia markets over the next three years. (Why they couldn’t just announce it once is beyond me, folks.) Verizon CTO Tony Melone will be making the announcement alongside Senator Jay Rockefeller and Governor Joe Manchin in Charleston – one of the confirmed markets – next Wednesday.
This adds another 10 cities to the list of confirmed cities getting Big Red’s LTE at launch (it wasn’t said if any of West Virginia’s cities would be included at launch.)
If any of you in Virginia were concerned Verizon would pass you by because West Virginia isn’t considered an “NFL city” (or even state), then you can throw those concerns out of the window. Now we’re just waiting for Verizon to actually begin rolling the goods out.
[via Verizon]
Wow… I live on the outskirts of Charleston, Wv and I’m stunned at this news. This is not a big market at all. Oh well – good for Verizon.
But what about regular Virginia?
This is a great step for VZW in covering WV. That state is notorious for having horrible cell coverage – from all major providers.. It shows that VZW may kill two birds with one stone – enable high speed web access via cell phone connections & reliable phone service as well.
Its probably getting so much coverage from the Senator & Governor because they are normally left very far behind the technology curve…
Will Fraziers’ Bottom be covered?
@ Alleycat
I’m definitely not a guru on LTE but I don’t think it will even reach St. Albans / Nitro / Cross Lanes from Charleston but who knows.
They mention 10 major WV markets… I’m having a hard time coming up with 10 in my head.
Charleston
Huntington
Morgantown
Parkersburg
Beckley
???
I wouldn’t even consider all of these MAJOR markets. Will be very interesting to follow this going forward and I’m not even on Verizon.
I get excellent coverage with Sprint but I certainly don’t expect 4G in the near future.
I guess this makes West Virginia the wild and ‘wonderful’ Verizon Wireless dead zone no longer… I would want some LTE in regular Virginia as well, but I won’t be able to enjoy it for two years… Even if I did somehow get a LTE phone before my contract runs out, they wouldn’t bring LTE to my part of Virginia for at least that long… And forget about expecting LTE when I visit relatives in the middle of nowhere, they barely get 3G there… Hell, even the 2G there is pretty spotty.
What hype, there aren’t 10 major markets in W.Virginia. It is stretching it to say that W. Virginia as a whole is a major market. The entire state population is only slightly larger than Phoenix, AZ (and that is only counting those within the city limits of Phoenix, not including all of the suburbs). I’m happy for those who live there getting this coverage, but, come on VZW, let’s get real.
Really? West Virginia is getting announced before anywhere in Oregon (aside from PDX airport)? Our population is nearly 3x that of West Virginia!
BTW, Charleston (the biggest city and capital of WV has 1/10th the population of Portland (Oregon’s biggest city)and half the population of Salem (Oregon’s Capital)
West VA???…has Verizon lost its mind?
I live in Charleston, WV and Im thrilled. To all the haters, get over it.. We’ve dealt with scraps forever, let us have our moment.
It’s not entirely clear that the author of this article knows West Virginia is an independent state, not part of Virginia. Despite seceding from the Confederate state of Virginia in 1863, it seems the vast majority of Americans don’t care to recognize us.
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For those asking “why WV?”, here’s an article that mentions some of the politics behind this move: http://gigaom.com/2010/10/21/politics-matter-verizon-picks-west-virginia-for-lte-launch/
For me, it’s awesome to see my home state finally at the forefront of technology instead of 20 years behind. I always wondered why Verizon has 3G coverage in some of the most remote parts of the southern coal fields, but not Morgantown, a college town with about 30,000 students. Guess we’re going to skip that 3rd generation and go to 4 (or 3.14159, or whatever the ITU decides to call it today).
Let’s goooooo mountaineers!
Several things in play here beyond just population. WV on the whole has horrible cell coverage and not even reliable land-lines in some areas. The infrastructure can use the boost. It’s not hard to imagine that Verizon received Federal Stimulus dollars for this project, when that may not be an option in major metro areas. That’s also likely why Rockerfeller(D) and Manchin(D)(in a tight Senate race himself) are going to glean some good exposure off of it. Either way, it’s good for WV.
As a recent transplant to Charleston from Cleveland, this puzzles me as well….There are so few people here whom I can even picture knowing what to do with this technology. There isn’t even any tech industry to be helped by this…why??? Verizon is the least used cellular carrier here, there are far more people on AT&T and Sprint.
And by the way….you don’t have to differentiate West Virginia from Virginia by saying “regular” Virginia…that is absurd and sounds like the musings of the uneducated.
As a citizen of West Virginia, I find part of this article offensive. We ARE a state. We deserve LTE just as anyone else in this country. Before making a comment in regards to West Virginia not being a state, please do your research or pay a little more attention during history class.
I’m an AT&T user and I find this news exciting. We have a small population but that doesn’t take away whether we
should have LTE or not. I’d anything, it would test VZW because WV is very open and spread out. We have big gaps in population and a lot of trees! It will test VZW capabilities.
I was recently looking at buying a house in WV (the Charles Town area) and the main reason I didn’t is because of the craptacular high-speed and cell service (yes, it’s that important to me). Glad to see that people there are finally getting a choice.
And for those of you who bitch about this, look up Frontier Communications. If you think that having subpar broadband service (as in, dialup can be faster and more reliable sometimes) is what people deserve, then I feel sorry for you. WV deserves better than what they’re getting and they’re finally getting it.
As a former WV resident who was born and raised there, I say right on. I was recently back there over the summer for a visit and was bummed to see my Droid 1 drop to 1X in so many areas.
It’s actually quite smart to start initial deployments in the rural and left behind areas. I live in Inwood, WV which is a forgotten area. I can’t even get comcast cable internet. There are lots of areas like that here in WV. The smart thing here is that there is no competition against Verizon. If/When Verizon deploys LTE into these rural markets, they have an instant customer base. And before people start with the WV jokes realize that the eastern panhadle of WV is composed of mostly commuters to from the major NOVA (Northern Virginia) and DC areas for work. There’s a lot of geeks here for the cheap land. Now we want our broadband!