Tech Bubble: The Next Generation | The Next Generation Verizon's Technology Innovation Center in Waltham will be a corporate showplace and hub of 4G network development
UHF to me means watching old television shows on a snowy, nosebleed channel broadcasting from Newark, NJ. There's also that Weird Al movie, which I'll have to show my son now that he has a taste for such things. UHF was the epitome of basement-studio, low-tech, no-budget programming best viewed on a small black-and-white TV with a bent loop antenna.
That nostalgic incarnation of UHF exists no longer. After all, "Ultra High Frequency" is just a slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. In 2009, the FCC swept away the last remnants of the old UHF regime as part of the transition to digital broadcast television. In the process, quite a bit of the UHF spectrum opened up to developers of wireless networks, which are poised to make real money in the UHF space.
Waltham, it seems, is going to be where that new effort will take shape.
Under construction in the Reservoir Woods East Campus on Winter Street is the Verizon Technology Innovation Center, which is why traffic patterns in the vicinity are discombobulated at all hours.
The new lab is an extension of an existing one on the site where an impressive concentration of engineering master's degrees, doctorates, and patents are hard at work defining and adding value to the new frontier that was once UHF.
The Waltham site hosts an existing lab facility that was once run by GTE, another fragment of the AT&T breakup that merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications in the summer of 2000.
Verizon says the new technology center will encompass 60,000 square feet in a three-story building and house more than 300 technologists representing a wide range of disciplines. Their main focus will be developing Verizon's implementation of a Fourth Generation (4G) wireless network. Verizon is hardly the only player in the 4G marketplace and there's a rival standard in WiMAX, which is championed by Sprint Nextel. According to Michael Weinraub, a Verizon director of corporate technology, one of the main purposes of the lab is to investigate interoperability of hardware and software from different vendors to help assure that as many players as possible can perform in Verizon's 4G marketplace.
"The Technology Innovation Center is not just going to be a place for Verizon employees to work," Weinraub said. "The facility will be host to 4G wireless technology developers, from international telecom giants to local independent consultants. As long as people have interesting ideas, we'll make room for them."
Potential Access
Clearly, Verizon intends the Technology Innovation Center to be part showcase, part test bed and part brain trust. With its multi-million-dollar investment in the site, Verizon is hoping to convince the industry that now is the time to buy into 4G.
If the architectural drawings are anything to go by, the building will cut a fine profile on the leafy shores of the Cambridge Reservoir. However, the Technology Innovation Center represents only a small fraction of the company's wager on 4G.
Currently, the first nationwide 4G network is undergoing user trials in the Boston area and the company hopes to make its wireless network commercially available by the end of 2010.
The Technology Innovation Center is slated to open in 2011. In the meantime, the company is installing equipment at existing cell sites and switching centers around the country.
By the end of next year, Verizon anticipates 100 million people will have potential access to 4G technology, although its cadre of actual users will only be a small percentage of this number. If all goes according to plan, 4G will be available nationwide by 2013.
"In order to get users to sign up, there have to be compelling, useful products for them to access the network with," said William Uliasz, another Verizon technology director. "An important function of the center will be certification testing of all 4G network devices to make sure they work as intended and as advertised."
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