Verizon 4G Network Struggles in New York City, Chicago, Other Cities, Fix Coming Soon

Verizon Wireless is one of the biggest service providers for the United States, but the company is struggling to keep up with the demand for its 4G LTE network in major population centers such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. Now, the company is claiming that it's focusing on how to fix these issues and ensure that the network is able to handle further growth in these large areas.

As PC Mag reported, at a recent Wells Fargo conference CFO Fran Shammo acknowledged users are putting "pressure" on the Verizon network, and explained the network has slowed down in some areas because "...the amount of consumption of video took us a little by surprise."

Shammo stated that roughly a third of United States Verizon customers use around 64 percent of the data provided by the network, but in big metropolitan areas oftentimes the numbers are "well north of that," he said. "That obviously has put a pressure on our network. We did not anticipate that amount of growth in the network."

Due to this growth, many users have had their network brought down to 3G. Shammo clarified that that is the norm for many areas of high volume data consumption:

"There are certain pockets where absolutely you're going to experience that downtick from the LTE network down to 3G because of capacity constraints."

However, Shammo assured customers that this slowdown is a temporary problem, and Verizon is determined to stop its expansion of the network and fix these problems before 2013 is over.

"I'm done with my coverage build. So now, all my effort is on capacity...Once we get over this little bump here, I think by year end you're going to see us separate ourselves because all our [capital expenditures] will be centered around densification," Shammo said. "And then you'll start to see us talk about things like VOLTE [voice over LTE] and ... LTE-advanced technologies in the next year. We'll be in a great position to dedicate resources to that because we're done [with] coverage. Each week that goes, you're going to see improvement...By the end of this year you're going to see all those problems dissipate and then going into next year we'll be ahead of the curve again."

Whether or not there's any truth to the executive's words is largely up in the air, but in the meantime big city Verizon customers will have to wait a little bit longer for their downloads.