Verizon has 45% market-share lead in public-safety adoption, keynote speaker says

Verizon Frontline has the greatest level of public-safety broadband adoption of any U.S. carrier, providing almost 4.5 million connections to 30,000 public-safety entities, a Verizon Frontline official said last week.

Patty Roze, vice president of public-sector sales for Verizon, cited the statistics during her portion of the company’s keynote presentation on Thursday morning at IWCE 2022 in Las Vegas. Verizon Frontline—the public-safety-communications unit of Verizon—is “public safety’s trusted partner,” she said.

“More first responders trust Verizon Frontline for reliable connectivity—more than any other network provider, hands down,” Roze said during the keynote address. “Nearly 4.5 million connections and 30,000 public-safety agencies are subscribed—more than 45% more customers than the closest competitor.”

Indeed, AT&T officials have stated that the FirstNet system it is building supports more than 3 million connections and more than 19,500 agencies. AT&T officials repeatedly have claimed that FirstNet is the market leader for law-enforcement agencies, but several industry sources have said that Verizon continues to be the most popular broadband provider for fire agencies.

Verizon typically has not shared public-safety adoption figures in the past, but these figures represent a significant change in the public-safety-broadband market.

When the AT&T was selected in to build, operate and maintain the FirstNet system in 2017, Verizon was acknowledged as the dominant player in the public-safety broadband arena. Most analysts believed that Verizon had least 70% of the market at the time, with at least a 150% advantage—possibly more than 200%—when compared to AT&T subscriptions in the sector.

At the time, industry sources cited Verizon’s superior LTE coverage as the primary reason for its overwhelming popularity among public-safety entities. Verizon officials claimed a massive LTE coverage advantage—between 400,000 square miles to 450,000 square miles, depending on the source associated with Verizon—for several years.

Verizon officials stopped making this claim in early 2020, after AT&T cited third-party data that—after AT&T’s significant infrastructure investment to meet its FirstNet buildout obligations—its network footprint had narrowed the coverage gap between the carriers to 70,000 square miles.

While public-safety officials celebrated the 10^th anniversary of the enactment of the law establishing FirstNet last month, AT&T claimed that its network footprint now covers 2.81 million square miles—a figure that was more than 50,000 square miles more than any other U.S. wireless carrier, according to AT&T.

But AT&T’s coverage advantage is much greater than this, based on figures shared by Roze, who mentioned coverage numbers during the keynote while emphasizing Verizon’s considerable financial commitment to build out its wireless network.

“Reliable communications demand exceptional coverage,” Roze said. “Verizon delivers an unrivaled 4G LTE network and is leading in 5G innovation.

“Verizon has invested more than $176 billion in the network since 2000. Our 4G LTE network covers 327 million people—more than 99% of the U.S. [population]—and over 2.68 million square miles.”

Based on this coverage figure provided by Roze, AT&T would have a 130,000-square-mile coverage advantage when compared to Verizon.

If accurate, the 2.68 million-square-miles coverage figure cited by Roze would mean that Verizon essentially has not expanded the footprint of its network in more than two years.

Industry sources have noted that Verizon has not focused its network investments on expanding its coverage footprint. Instead, the carrier primarily has sought to deploy infrastructure to deliver high-speed 5G connectivity on millimeter-wave and mid-band spectrum—the foundation of Verizon’s Ultra Wideband offering.

Roze noted the carrier’s 5G progress during the IWCE 2022 keynote.

“The Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network will be paired with the nation’s most reliable, number-one 4G network,” Roze said. “Verizon will continue to operate its 4G LTE network, enabling businesses to preserve their investments in their LTE devices and sensors for years to come.

“5G nationwide is available in more than 2,700 cities, with the newly launched 5G Ultra Wideband being available in more than 1,700 of those cities. We expect to cover more than 175 million people by the end of the year with our newly launched 5G Ultra Wideband.”

In addition to delivering significant broadband capacity to its users, Verizon Frontline provide the high level of reliability that public safety seeks in its communications, according to Roze.

“Verizon Frontline delivers the reliability, the redundancy, backup and security that first responders need,” she said. “100% of our macro sites have battery backup across the U.S. More than 500 deployable assets are available for our first responders during crisis-response efforts.

“We have a dedicated disaster-response team that is made up of former first responders and service members, and we have more than 200 dedicated, certified drone pilots.”

Bryan Schromsky, Verizon’s managing partner of federal government and public safety, expressed excitement about the upcoming transition of the carrier’s virtual evolved packet core from non-standalone 5G to the standalone 5G standard that supports network slicing.

“We will migrate from what is called non-standalone—Release 15—to standalone,” Schromsky said during the keynote address. “When that happens, that offers new things, like private network slices. The ability to offer in the standards like ultra-low latency and enhanced mobile broadband.

“Having that ability to do those network functions and control that on an application or use-case basis is something that really has never been done before. So, there is so much more integration between the radio access network and the cloud environment that we haven’t seen [before]. Virtualization is here to stay, and it’s very exciting.”

Verizon is not limiting its coverage efforts to terrestrial systems, according to Schromsky.

“Some of the agreements that Verizon has for network integration is actually bringing satellite communications and low-earth-orbit [LEO] satellites into the mix,” he said. “

“When you look at cellular technology, traditional landline technology and you start bringing in satellite technology, having a flexible network that actually integrates with all of the leading cloud providers—as well as the infrastructure—is paramount.”

Network security is also a focus for Verizon, particularly in the current geopolitical environment, in which concerns about nation-state cyberattacks from China, Russia and others have surfaced in recent years, Schromsky said.

“I can tell you that, between CISA, DHS, DoJ and the DoD, the number-one concern that they have around 5G is cybersecurity and the supply chain,” Schromsky said. “We  do not use any Huawei or ZTE network infrastructure in our network, which is key as we go forward here. We have a trusted supply chain.

“This is a never-ending battle, when it comes to cybersecurity.”