Verizon Struggling with LTE Network in Big Cities

While it may be good to hear that Verizon's LTE network is expanding and many of its customers are taking advantage of the faster connection, the carrier has admitted that its network is struggling in big cities. Massive numbers users in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have put "pressure" on the network resulting in a degradation of the connection quality.

This sort of issue is to be expected whenever too many people adopt a relatively new sort of technology but even Verizon has stated that it was surprised by how many people were interested in LTE. In areas where there are simply too many LTE subscribers, users are being pushed down to 3G data speeds, which is significantly slower than 4G LTE.

Too Many People

Verizon's network infrastructure will definitely have to undergo serious upgrades now that LTE is rapidly expanding throughout the U.S., but it seems as though the majority of these issues stem from astounding adoption rates.

Fran Shammo, Verizon's CRO spoke about the LTE issue while at a Wells Fargo conference. "I would say that the amount of consumption of video took us a little by surprise," said Shammo. "There are certain pockets where we're absolutely going to experience that downtick from the LTE network down to 3G because of capacity constraints."

Considering that many of its customers have ended up with Verizon solely because of its otherwise reliable LTE service, the thousands of subscribers in big cities who are dealing with degraded speeds are surely annoyed.

As of right now, 64 percent of all Verizon data used comes through a LTE connection but in large cities, Shammo admitted that number is significantly higher.

In an attempt to leave attendees with some good news, Shammo did comment on Verizon's recent buyout of Vodafone. She let everyone know that...