Shen also said the North Carolina trials have gone well and will be extended until next June. (Click here for a review of the service.) He said that it's less a technology trial and more of a marketing trial.
"We discovered this is a lifestyle product," Shen said. "It's very similar to what cellular service was in the beginning, when people asked whether they would carry a mobile phone everywhere. Now, we're finding that, after a month or two of service, people start carrying their laptop and PC Card with them."
He also noted strong response from businesses in the trial, with applications including real-time database look-ups, remote monitoring and real estate accessing and uploading images of properties.
Shen said that, whichever wireless broadband technology is selected, it will operate in the 1.9 GHz portion of the spectrum, which Nextel is in the process of acquiring. It had petitioned the FCC for the spectrum and Verizon Wireless recently dropped its objections in exchange for a promise from Nextel to drop legal proceedings related to push-to-talk technology. He said that the company's voice customers will continue to use the 800 MHz portion of the spectrum.
Shen agreed that rolling out its wireless technology puts Nextel in the position of being both a cellular phone company and a wireless ISP. "We think of ourselves as a wireless company, not just a cellular company," he said.
Verizon is demoing crowd analytics technology that uses 5G along with AI and mobile edge computing to give stadium operators insights into the flow of fans throughout a venue.
As we move closer to fully realizing the potential of Wi-Fi 7, it becomes evident that the RF, signaling, and throughput tests are not merely procedural checkpoints but the pillars of excellence in wireless communication.
With low earth orbit (LEO) satellites fast becoming the norm and 3GPP unifying telecom standards around the globe, the satellite IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) sector ought to be looking at a bright horizon. But is this the case?
