Verizon Wireless has announced that customers in more than 2,000 markets can now receive faster downlink transmission speeds following the deployment of carrier aggregation (CA). Further, subscribers in around 1,100 of those markets can also access 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM functionality. Used in combination, Verizon claims that these three technologies ‘drastically impact the capacity available for customers to use the Verizon network and the speed at which their data sessions are completed’.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, in August 2016 Verizon launched LTE-A technology in a total of 461 cities nationwide, covering more than 288 million people. Depending on location and spectrum availability, Verizon leverages either CA or tri-band CA (3C) technology encompassing the 700MHz, 1900MHz (PCS) and 1700MHz (AWS) bands.