To stay in front of the LTE pack, Verizon purchased $3.6 billion worth of spectrum from a cable consortium last year, then sold off a bunch of its own to gain FCC approval. The fruit of that labor is now arriving in force, as Big Red has quietly turned on the new Band 4 frequencies in the commercial corridors of major cities like Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta. The rollout began last month in New York, when customers began reporting higher internet speeds.
We’ve already logged a few sightings of Verizon’s powerful new LTE network in New York and other cities, but in the last few months Verizon has been rapidly working behind the scenes on upgrading its LTE infrastructure across the country. Today on the third anniversary of its initial 4G network launch, Verizon Wireless revealed to Gigaom that it has now set the new network beast loose in dozens of major markets across the country.