Verizon to Roll Out Wireless Broadband

Verizon Wireless Monday said it is introducing new high-speed wireless broadband services for its business customers.

Beginning in the third quarter of 2003, Verizon will offer two different wireless broadband standards. Verizon said it will offer 1xEV-DO service in Washington, D.C. and San Diego, California, while offering a Wi-Fi-based wireless broadband service elsewhere around the nation. Verizon said the 1xEV-DO service will offer wireless data speeds of up to 2.4 Megabits per second.

The company will also offer an 802.11b, or Wi-Fi service, around most of the country through connections to its wide area network (WAN) and wireless nodes nationwide. The 1xEV-DO service will utilize virtual private network (VPN) connections, so that customers can connect to their own corporate local area network (LAN) or intranet.

Verizon Wireless disclosed some details about the new service which will be commercially available in the third quarter of 2003 at CTIA Wireless 2003 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Verizon said its 1xEV-DO service will be faster than GPRS and EDGE data transmission speeds.

Verizon said the new service will enable customers to remotely access corporate intranets and databases, corporate e-mail with attachments, large file transfers, and even streamed audio and video. For customers to achieve high-speed wireless data transfers, they will need 1xEV-DO devices, such as PCMCIA cards, modems and mobile computer-phone gadgets.

Verizon Wireless said it has completed technological trials of its 1xEV-DO in Washington with Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks in San Diego. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone .

In other Verizon news, Verizon SuperPages.com has been chosen by About.com as the yellow pages service for the Internet content destination. Now, when About.com users access the yellow pages service they will be able to also use MerchantMatch, a comparative pricing service, and My Directory, a personal directory services that allows users to customize both business and residential listings.