Verizon Reveals Plans To Expand San Francisco Innovation Center

Earlier today at its Innovation Center in Waltham, Mass., Verizon announced that it will be expanding its Innovation Center located in San Francisco, which is a smaller, newer version of its New England sibling. In addition, the carrier's Vice President of Network Support spoke about Verizon's LTE network and HD Voice, stating that it plans to have handsets with HD Voice support available later this year, and will then move towards making it cross-carrier.

Regarding the expansion of the Innovation Center in San Francisco, Engadget reports that the carrier plans to boost it to something more akin to its New England-based center. In addition, Verizon also wants to roll out more Innovation Centers, cited as saying that it has three or four big cities in mind, but that it's focusing on its existing centers for now. The possible locations of the new centers weren't specified.

In addition, the carrier's Network Support vice president Mike Haberman said that Verizon's ambitious and rather fast-paced rollout of its LTE network, as well as its plans for HD Voice, are still going strong and as planned. Most of its LTE rollouts will be "substantially done" by the middle of this year. Over half of Verizon's network traffic – 54-percent – is delivered via 4G.

And that, naturally, leads into questions about the carrier's HD Voice plans, and when users will be able to take advantage of the technology. Speaking on that, Haberman said that Verizon is testing high-definition voice at the present moment, and that the technology is "working in the network right now." He says he expects HD Voice-capable handsets to be readied this year, and for it all to go public in early 2014. He also mentions that Verizon is looking at eventually making HD Voice cross-carrier.

[via Engadget]