Verizon Launches EV-DO Rev A!

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/01/verizon-launches-ev-do-rev-a-network/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/01/...-rev-a-network/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"It wasn't much of a secret, we saw last week that Verizon's USB720 EV-DO Rev A dongle was slated for a February 1st release, and it makes sense that Verizon would be launching a network to feed the fat wireless pipes to it on the same day, but all the same we're quite relieved to hear Verizon Wireless is finally doing the Rev A thing all official-like -- after being all sneaksy about it up until now. The locations look to be the same ones we were rumoring earlier, at least for the most part: Massachusetts, including Boston and its suburbs; Richmond and Hampton Roads, Virginia; Chicago and its suburbs; Gary Indiana; Salt Lake City along with other cities in Utah; and Florida throughout Verizon's existing broadband network."</i><br /><br />Want to go faster? Have Verizon and live in these lucky cities? Then perhaps you'll be able to start blazing away on the wireless web.

[ricksfiona]

I wonder why San Francisco is almost always never high on the roll-out list...

[Kacey Green]

I wish T-mo would roll out some high-speed services. I wonder what kind of niche at&amp;t will try and fill.

[Craig Horlacher]

Maybe someone can explain things to me.

My understanding was that Sprint has been rolling out EVDO Rev B for a while. Cingular is rolling out hsdpa (I know because I've used it and it's mad fast).

So why is verizon bothering with EVDO Rev A? My understanding is that besides being slow compared to hsdpa and evdo rev b, rev a also can not do concurrent voice and data. This means, among other things, when you're browsing the web you can't receive phone calls. Rev A speeds really aren't impressive from what I've heard either.

I did a lot of playing around with my laptop and hsdpa card in a cingular 3g area and with only 4 out of 5 bars I got just over 1Mb down and 115kbps up. It felt nearly as snappy as my 3Mb down 768kbps up dsl at home when browsing the web. I had no problems streaming video. I didn't get to try any voip. I'd like to try my vonage adapter over it. I'm not sure how much of a problem the latency would cause.

So, if anyone really knows about this stuff I'd love to have the different technologies explained and I'm sure others would be glad for it too.