Verizon Wireless Admits "Growing Pains" With 4G LTE Network

Verizon has dealt with quite a few network hiccups of late, and now the carrier is taking a quick moment to come clean about their growing pains. By and large, their LTE rollout has gone smoothly. They've expanded very rapidly, and there's little to complain about when it comes to range and speed. But of course, nationwide outages cause a major stir, and when it happens three or four times in a month, well...that's a major stir.

A new statement from the company strikes us as strange, with no mention of an apology and plenty of defensive terminology. They call their 4G LTE network "by far he largest and the most advanced 4GLTE wireless network in the world," and admit to "growing pains and recent issues that affected" their customers. They say that these were "unforeseen despite careful, diligent planning, deployment and ongoing upgrade programs." Further clarification from VZW: "

Problems customers experienced affected connectivity to the 4GLTE Network and data service. Several times, we have proactively “moved” 4GLTE customers onto our 3G Network to ensure all would have a data connection. For brief periods, such as on Wednesday (12/28), 4G LTE customers could not connect to the 3G Network as quickly as we would have liked.

Nonetheless, we estimate that 4GLTE connectivity has been available approximately 99 percent of the time this year."


Below is a description of why it happened, but again, no apologies or future promises.

Why have these issues occurred with our 4GLTE Network? Each incident has been different from a technical standpoint. Our engineers have successfully diagnosed those past triggering events, and they have not re-occurred. We also work diligently to rectify technical problems in the Network before they affect any customers.

Our 3G and 1X Networks continue to reliably process calls, texts and data for customers with 3G devices and, when necessary, 4GLTE devices. It continues to perform at the high level that established it as the nation’s largest and most reliable 3G Network.

We are taking a number of steps, working closely with our network suppliers, to ensure the integrity of our 4GLTE Network. We continue to fortify and improve its performance, and our goal is that our 4GLTE Network meets the same high standards that our 3G Network has set for performance and reliability.

Among the numerous measures we have taken or will take are: geographic segmentation, which enables us to isolate, contain and rectify network performance issues, and maintain service to the majority of customers when an issue does develop; and software fixes that we have developed, tested and applied regularly – and will continue to do so. Both will improve performance and reliability.

And finally, we are learning from these issues and applying the same gold standard to our 4GLTE Network that make our 3G Network the nation’s largest and most reliable.

Verizon Wireless is a leader and pioneer in this cutting edge technology that provides very fast wireless data speeds, enabling customers to enjoy the best experience in video and other wireless data usage. Clear unbuffered streaming video, super fast file downloads and wide availability are among the advantages we offer to customers. The capabilities of 4GLTE have exceeded many expectations.

We will not rest until our 4GLTE network performs at the very highest levels that our customers have come to expect from us.