Sally Lapointe: Fashion designer rides celebrity wave

Mass. native gets boost from singer

By Christopher Muther Globe Staff / February 17, 2011

From Boston.com 

NEW YORK — On the third floor of a sparse art gallery, a dozen stylists frantically straightened and slicked the hair of a small army of porcelain-skinned models. A dozen makeup artists painted faces with foundation and smoky eye shadow. Amid the bustle, the woman who should have been the most anxious calmly took it all in.

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All eyes on designer
Sally Lapointe

• Fashion designer
  rides celebrity wave

• Red threads look ahead

Marblehead native and designer Sally LaPointe, 26, showed her fall/winter 2011 collection at New York Fashion Week on Friday night. But unlike her first show here last fall, this time the eyes of the fashion elite watched closely. After pop superstar Lady Gaga plucked a LaPointe-designed black jersey dress to wear at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the designer has found herself on the brink of the big time.

The audience for LaPointe’s show included her downtown art-school pals, but also featured tastemaking editors from Italian Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily, Elle magazine, and the influential website Style.com. Retail buyers, who will decide whether to pick up LaPointe’s line for their stores, were also in the house.

“I should probably be a lot more nervous,’’ LaPointe said shortly before the runway show, her black hair tucked under a ski hat. “But I feel good about the line. I feel good about how things are going. It’s all kind of exciting.’’

LaPointe, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate now based in New York, launched her line just two years ago and was quickly named one of New York Magazine’s “Nine Designers to Watch.’’ Her first collection also caught the eye of stylist Nicola Formichetti, who chose the black dress for Gaga to wear at a much buzzed about Polaroid event in Las Vegas.

“It definitely put her on the map,’’ says Harper’s Bazaar contributing editor and celebrity stylist Mary Alice Stephenson. “That press is worth probably a million dollars.’’

The fact that Gaga wore a LaPointe creation made perfect sense. The designer’s spring collection was based on the idea of going mad, and the dresses and jumpsuits were over-the-top, fanciful, and not exactly something the average woman would wear for a night on the town.

For her new fall collection, LaPointe scaled back on the craziness. While she showed some flashy pieces, the designer made huge strides toward wearability, or, as LaPointe prefers to say, “desirability.’’ Modern and feminine, the silhouettes were body conscious and well-tailored, whether it was a curve-hugging red gown or a full-sleeved silver minidress with matching leggings.

The reaction to her new line has been swift and positive. Women’s Wear Daily raved: “Futuristic can sometimes look dated but Sally LaPointe’s printed silk shirts in white and fiery orange over pants and a cropped red leather jacket were right on for the here and now.’’ Style.com noted: “They’re just the sort of thing Gaga would slip on to pick up the paper.’’

When LaPointe and her best friend and business partner Sarah Adelson launched the line, they were working day jobs at other fashion companies and never anticipated LaPointe’s work would get noticed so quickly. They now focus on the designs full time.

“Once you get a press jump like that, it creates more buzz, which is huge for us,’’ LaPointe says. “This is a pretty exciting time. It’s funny, because when my friends heard that Gaga wore one of my dresses, they just said, ‘It’s about time,’ because it just makes perfect sense that she would.’’

Celebrities have become a key vehicle for fashion designers who want to get their clothes noticed. During red carpet season, top designers pay celebrities thousands of dollars to wear their gowns to award shows and high-profile events.

But it doesn’t have to be a star-studded gathering. Paparazzi photos of a celeb wearing an eye-catching look to a restaurant, boutique, or even a court date can have a huge impact on the fate of a fashion label. The body-hugging white dress that Lindsay Lohan wore to face felony grand theft charges last week immediately sold out thanks to the publicity.

“Look at what happened with [fashion designer] Kimberly Ovitz,’’ says Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire magazine. “Despite the fact that it was Lindsay Lohan, and despite the fact that it was a court date, it was still felt like an incredibly helpful moment for Kimberly. There are so many young designers out there, and the challenge for them is to get their name out there.’’

Designer Adam Lippes, who showed his collection in New York on Saturday, can speak to the power of celebrity. He’s seen his outfits worn on reality TV, but his star rose tremendously after Oprah Winfrey featured his clothes on her show.

“You can’t imagine how important something like this is,’’ Lippes said. “People are constantly looking at celebrities in magazines and blogs. It shouldn’t be that important, but it is. The bigger the celebrity, the bigger the exposure, and right now there isn’t much bigger than Lady Gaga.’’

Still, most shoppers aren’t looking for costumes; they want clothing they can wear and feel good in. LaPointe said that she had a slightly different approach in mind as she designed the new collection. She knew the fashion world would be watching, and she wants to keep it that way.

“I think that the meat and potatoes of the collection is that I wanted to make the clothes really wearable,’’ LaPointe says. “I do have a few show pieces, but I made a stronger push to make clothes that a women would really want.’’

It’s too early to tell whether the good reviews will lead retail buyers to stock shelves with LaPointe’s pieces. But no matter what happens, her two biggest fans were enthralled during last week’s show. LaPointe’s parents, who traveled from Marblehead, sat in the front row watching models strut the runway in shades of red, black, and turquoise. Their shy daughter is now the center of attention.

“It’s her outlet,’’ said her mother, Jodi LaPointe. “We all need an outlet to express ourselves, and she’s found a beautiful one. I just can’t believe I’m sitting here. Wow. I’m at my daughter’s fashion show. It doesn’t get better than that.’’

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87

By Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff
From: http://www.boston.com/

Howard Zinn.

ARCHIVE | 4/1/08

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."

Zinn turns to comics

Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn's writings "simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement."

For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People’s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s.

As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and John Silber, former president of Boston University. Dr. Zinn, a leading critic of Silber, twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe."

Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU Five" were soon dropped.

In 1997, Dr. Zinn slipped into popular culture when his writing made a cameo appearance in the film "Good Will Hunting." The title character, played by Matt Damon, lauds "A People’s History" and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.

"Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life," Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon's co-star in "Good Will Hunting," said in a statement. "He taught me how valuable -- how necessary -- dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him -- and try to impart it to my own children -- in his memory."

Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009, and he narrated a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."

"Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream," said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe's opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. "But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful."

Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and was working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he met Roslyn Shechter.

"She was working as a secretary," Dr. Zinn said in an interview with the Globe nearly two years ago. "We were both working in the same neighborhood, but we didn't know each other. A mutual friend asked me to deliver something to her. She opened the door, I saw her, and that was it."

He joined the Army Air Corps, and they courted through the mail before marrying in October 1944 while he was on his first furlough. She died in 2008.

During World War II, he served as a bombardier, was awarded the Air Medal, and attained the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University on the GI Bill as a 27-year-old freshman. He worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.

Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were novelist Alice Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund.

During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.

Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.

The focus of his activism became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at many rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, another leading antiwar activist, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.

Dr. Zinn’s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and "Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique" (1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966).

He also was the author of "The Politics of History" (1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990).

In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus."

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did.

"Howard was an old and very close friend," Chomsky said. "He was a person of real courage and integrity, warmth and humor. He was just a remarkable person."

Carroll called Dr. Zinn "simply one of the greatest Americans of our time. He will not be replaced -- or soon forgotten. How we loved him back."

In addition to his daughter, Dr. Zinn leaves a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaughters; and two grandsons.

Funeral plans were not available.

Big solar statement for Fenway Center

Complex to have 1,200 panels

The proposed solar components at Fenway Center feature an array on top of the shared-use air rights garage and a vertical array on the south face of the garage.

By Casey Ross Globe Staff / December 4, 2009

The developer of a $500 million complex in Boston is dramatically expanding its solar installation, creating the largest private solar facility in Massachusetts, and one that -with its prominent location next to Fenway Park - will become the most visible example of the state’s embrace of renewable energy.

John Rosenthal’s Fenway Center project will have 1,200 solar panels on the rooftops of its five buildings that will generate up to 650 kilowatts.

The panels will supply all the power needs of a new commuter rail station Rosenthal is also building, making it the first energy-neutral transit facility in the state.

Yesterday state officials granted Fenway Center its most important environmental approval, paving the way for Rosenthal to soon begin construction after more than a decade of planning and delays.

Patrick administration officials cited the expansive solar facility as a key factor in its favor.

It is also a particularly per sonal achievement for Rosenthal, a longtime environmental activist who was jailed three times in the late 1970s and 1980s for protesting nuclear power plants.

“To leverage my business to produce green power is a dream come true for me,’’ he said. “This is certainly a wonderful turn of events.’’

Rosenthal had previously planned a smaller solar installation at Fenway Center, but decided to increase it substantially after the state and federal government boosted the value of tax credits that developers can use to finance such projects. It will cost $7.5 million to build the 650-kilowatt array, but Rosenthal estimated the tax credits will allow him to recoup his installation costs within four years. He will then use the proceeds from electricity sales to pay off the debt used to purchase the panels themselves.

“The Fenway Center project is demonstrating that advanced environmental measures can be incorporated into private real estate development on a compelling economic basis,’’ said Ian Bowles, state secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Rosenthal has created his own power company, Here Comes the Sun LLC, and in addition to supplying electricity to the train station, he expects to sell power to tenants of Fenway Center. He also hopes to add another 100 kilowatts of solar generation at a later date.

The complex is huge: 330 apartments, 370,000 square feet of office space, 90,000 square feet of stores, and a garage with 1,290 parking spaces, spread over 4.5 acres between Brookline Avenue and Beacon Street, on the Fenway Park side of the turnpike.

Also part of the development will be the new commuter rail station Rosenthal will build in exchange for winning the designation to build on public land, with the state picking up a portion of the cost.

The energy generated by the solar array will be enough to power not only the train station, but also about 100 apartments that are part of the development.

Rosenthal expects to begin the first phase of construction, on the train station, as early as next summer.

State and city officials believe that because of its prominent location, Rosenthal’s project will help demonstrate the possibilities of solar energy.

Several of Fenway Center’s buildings will also straddle the turnpike on a large deck, making the solar panels visible from multiple directions in an area of the city traversed by thousands of commuters daily.

The next-largest privately built solar array in Massachusetts is a 500-kilowatt facility Harvard University is building at one of its buildings in Watertown.

There are several larger solar facilities proposed for the state, but those would be at government-owned properties: The biggest is a 1.5-megawatt solar system at a waste-water plant in Pittsfield, while a 1-megawatt installation is proposed for the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

Rosenthal first proposed the project more than a decade ago, but he repeatedly ran into planning snags and neighborhood opposition. Fenway Center’s size and makeup also changed during that period.

It received a major boost earlier this year when the Patrick administration agreed to pay for some of the additional cost associated with building over the turnpike, a large expense that has stymied developments such as the Columbus Center project nearby.

Because Rosenthal is building on and over turnpike land, he will have to lease the property from the state. So to help him get started, the state will allow Rosenthal to knock off up to $65 million from his lease payments to cover the additional construction costs. Overall, his lease payments to the state should run around $300 million over the 99-year agreement.

Fenway Center still needs several permits to proceed, including a final approval from the state Department of Transportation. Nonetheless Rosenthal expects to start on a new Yawkey commuter rail station this summer. Once finished, he is planning to put a kiosk in the station that will illustrate how the solar panels will be used to power the station.

“It’s such a centrally located site that it presents a tremendous opportunity for demonstration and education,’’ Rosenthal said. “Hopefully, people will see the power we’re generating and see a way to turn their own meters backward.’’

Casey Ross can be reached at cross@globe.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

A match made in ER heaven: Boston drivers and jaywalkers

Crossing to their own beat:
Injuries up, but jaywalking abounds on Hub’s busy streets

By David Filipov Globe Staff / October 11, 2009

Shortly after 11 a.m. on a sunny Thursday, a most astounding thing happened on the busy intersection of the Boston University Bridge and Commonwealth Avenue. Alexandra Slender, a BU sophomore, stopped at a crosswalk, waited for the white gleam of the “Walk’’ sign, and crossed.

It was a rare act of civil obedience for a pedestrian in Boston, repeated by almost no one else on this day at this intersection. Throngs of iPod-wearing, cellphone-texting walkers blew through the red “Don’t walk’’ signs, barely acknowledging the flustered drivers who slammed on the brakes and banged on their dashboards in futility.

Other cities hit unruly pedestrians with fines that can cost upward of $50. The $1 ticket for illegally crossing the street in Massachusetts would deter no one, even if Boston police bothered to issue citations, which they do not do. In a city infamous for its combative drivers, the walkers are no less aggressive, immersed in what one pedestrian advocate called “a culture of jaywalking’’ - despite statistics that suggest Boston is increasingly perilous for those on foot.

Last year, 13 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents in Suffolk County, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, up from 10 the two previous years and 8 in 2005. The rate of pedestrian fatalities in Boston is low compared with other cities its size - a fact officials here attribute to the city’s compact layout, which generally prohibits high-speed driving.

But the number of Boston pedestrians taken to the hospital after accidents involving motor vehicles in 2008 shot up to 1,178, over 150 more than in any of the previous three years. That’s about 193 per 100,000 people. By contrast, there were 124 injuries per 100,000 people in New York City in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics were available from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. In Denver last year, a city of nearly Boston’s size, there were 39 pedestrian accidents per 100,000 people, according to the Denver Police Department. In Seattle, a city with nearly Boston’s population but much higher jaywalking fines, there were about 89 pedestrian injuries per 100,000 population in 2007, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Boston officials are amid a campaign to improve crosswalks and intersections to make them safer for typical pedestrians - meaning people in a hurry. It is nowhere near enough to stem the tide of illegal crossings. On any given day, at any given intersection in Boston, pedestrians cut off drivers on the notoriously clogged labyrinth of city streets. They wander off narrow sidewalks to avoid a puddle, a dog, or one another, without regard to an oncoming 10-ton truck. They take over thoroughfares en masse, in little urban coups d’etat. Daring individuals step out and stare down drivers defiantly, like toreadors in a bull ring.

Even Slender’s law-abiding act was guided not by philosophy, but by footwear. “Usually, I just cross,’’ she said, pointing toward her flimsy pair of flip-flops. “Today I have the wrong shoes for hurrying across the street.’’

Jaywalking - the act of crossing against a signal, or not using a crosswalk when it is within 300 feet - is illegal in Massachusetts. With the fourth violation in a calendar year, the $1 fine goes up. To $2.

“The fine doesn’t do the trick,’’ said Boston police Superintendent William B. Evans, who heads department’s Bureau of Field Services. He had not heard of any officers issuing citations for jaywalking, even though he believes the proliferation of mp3 players, personal digital assistants, and other digital devices have made pedestrians “even more self-absorbed,’’ and more likely to jaywalk, than ever.

Distractions are not the only reasons walkers cross out of turn. At the especially chaotic intersection of Congress and State streets, no more than 30 yards from the site of the Boston Massacre, David Brown set out from the curb on a “Don’t Walk’’ sign, in front of a moving taxicab. Brown stared at the cab. Luckily for him it stopped.

“I’m from Boston,’’ Brown explained.

Boston’s transportation commissioner, Thomas J. Tinlin, observes this uneven clash of wills and weight classes all the time. From an operations center on the seventh floor of City Hall, Tinlin can watch a wall-size array of monitors, which broadcast in greenish tint live feeds from up to 200 cameras installed throughout the city. Here, transportation engineers can adjust the timing of signals, make note of problems, and dispatch police to unclog congestion.

During one recent lunch hour, a monitor showed gridlock on Congress and State, caused by a construction site. Pedestrians, sensing the opportunity to save time, were dashing across Congress Street between backed-up trucks rather than walk the extra 100 feet to the crosswalk. Others were at crosswalks, but ignoring signals. On the monitor, it looked foolhardy.

“You have pedestrians who are making poor decisions,’’ Tinlin said.

The decisions did not look so poor on the ground. Roxana Santana, in a hurry to cross the street, pressed the button that she thought would render a “Walk’’ signal. It did not. Few people know this, but the buttons at some busy intersections are programmed to work only at night, when traffic is light. (“It’s supply and demand,’’ Tinlin said.) A crowd materialized as Santana grew impatient with the “Don’t Walk’’ signal. At a lull in the traffic, everyone started to cross, and after one last glare at the button, she joined them.

“I took a chance,’’ she said.

People jaywalk, said Rosa Carson, program coordinator at the pedestrian advocacy group WalkBoston, “because street infrastructure really disregards pedestrians’ needs.’’

WalkBoston has completed a study of what works and what does not at 200 city intersections, and, once it has tallied the results, plans to share them with local officials.

“Improving the infrastructure won’t solve the problem overnight but would, likely, move things in a safer direction,’’ Carson said.

In many other cities, jaywalking is not as ingrained in the pedestrian culture. Carson described being “amazed’’ in San Francisco to find pedestrians waiting at “Don’t Walk’’ signs, even when there were no cars. Seattle has been combating jaywalkers for years - no matter who they are. Kenny Williams, general manager of the Chicago White Sox, reportedly was slapped with a $56 jaywalking fine in Seattle in August. Manny Ramírez, still with the Red Sox at the time and perhaps accustomed to Boston jaywalking mores, was nabbed for illegally being Manny on a Seattle street in 2008. Ramírez was lucky - he got off with a stern lecture.

In cities such as Los Angeles or Houston, where major thoroughfares are multilane, high-speed boulevards, the layout discourages unprotected forays into traffic, said Jeff Larson, general manager of SmartRoute Systems Inc. in Cambridge.

Boston is taking a few steps. City transportation engineers, aided by recently installed digital-control boxes that allow them to program and synchronize signals at many city intersections, recently re-calibrated more than 100 traffic lights to give pedestrians more time and opportunities to cross. New traffic configurations allow pedestrians and cars going the same direction to cross an intersection simultaneously; signs tell vehicles to yield to pedestrians and walkers to watch out for cars. The city has introduced “Don’t Walk’’ signals that count down how much time is left to cross - an upgrade long commonplace in other cities. And City Hall has proposed legislation that would raise the fine for jaywalking to $20, and $50 after the first three offenses in a calendar year.

Above all, Tinlin said, the city is trying to accommodate everyone on the sidewalks and roads, not just those sitting behind the wheel.

This approach has yet to change habits. Drivers, Evans said, still cut people off in crosswalks, infractions that result in dozens of tickets a week. Pedestrians still jaywalk with no fear of penalty.

Tinlin, born and raised in South Boston, knows all about that.

“I tried to jaywalk this morning and my 7-year-old daughter said ‘Dad, why aren’t we using the crosswalk?’ ’’ he said recently. “Do I wait for the walk all the time? I’d love to tell you that I do, but I don’t.’’

“But I know that what I’m doing is wrong.’’

Globe correspondent Jack Nicas contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Boston / Seattle get To test high-speed 4G cellular network

By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff / August 13, 2009

Verizon Wireless has selected Boston and Seattle as the first two US cities to test its new wireless data service, with speeds five to 10 times faster than the service used today by such popular handsets as Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

The new network could mean big changes in the ways people use their smartphones or laptop computers, at home and on the road. Today’s networks, known as 3G, are good enough for checking e-mail or visiting websites, but they’re too slow for high-quality video or real-time video gaming. They can’t match the speed of the hard-wired Internet services offered by telephone and cable TV companies.

Verizon Wireless’s new network, called 4G, will have the ability to display crystal-clear videos and allow users to play complex multiplayer games, or hold two-way videoconferences. Consumers might replace broadband Internet services from cable and phone companies with the new wireless service, in the same way some have ditched their traditional, hard-wired telephone lines in favor of cellphones.

Verizon Wireless will not say what it plans to charge for the new service, or reveal the speeds it will provide consumers. News of 4G’s debut cities came in a Verizon Wireless conference call for investors on July 27, and the company said it is not yet ready to speak publicly about it.

But Godfrey Chua, research analyst at IDC Corp. in Framingham, said it would almost certainly deliver enough speed to offer serious competition to traditional Internet services. “If you have cable modem at home, it gets us up to that level,’’ Chua said.

Cable TV and Internet giant Comcast Corp. said it does not believe that 4G poses much of a threat. Spokeswoman Mary Nell Westbrook noted that the nation’s first 4G service, offered in several cities by Clearwire Corp. of Kirkland, Wash., can’t measure up to Comcast’s higher-speed Internet products. “Our services are so much faster than that today,’’ Westbrook said.

Verizon Wireless will use a technology called Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, to build its new 4G network. Some carriers are adopting a separate system called WiMax.

“The hope with LTE and WiMax is at some point, they could start displacing your DSL and cable providers,’’ said Allen Nogee, an analyst at In-Stat, a technology research firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

A report issued in February by the company’s chief technology officer, Dick Lynch, said Verizon Wireless’s LTE system has been tested at speeds almost 60 times faster than the company’s current 3G network.

The Boston and Seattle deployments are just the beginning, according to Verizon Wireless president Denny Strigl, who said in the conference call that the company intends to launch the new services in up to 30 markets next year, making the service available to as many as 100 million potential subscribers.

The new 4G networks will be a boon for consumer electronics makers, because today’s cellphones and laptops won’t work with the new technology. Millions of subscribers will need to purchase new phones and plug-in computer adapters to connect to the new networks.

While Verizon Wireless is moving quickly toward 4G, the second-biggest cellphone carrier in the US - AT&T - is taking its time. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said that his company won’t even begin testing a 4G service until 2011. Instead, this year it will upgrade its existing 3G network to deliver about seven times the current speed.

“3G is going to be around for a long, long time, even as 4G is deployed,’’ Siegel said.

T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest cell carrier in the country, is also taking a go-slow approach to 4G. The company hasn’t even finished building its 3G network yet. Like AT&T, T-Mobile will boost its 3G performance through a technology upgrade, though T-Mobile won’t say how much speed it expects from the improved network.

Clearwire, which used the WiMax technology to build its 4G network, has signed up residential consumers in Baltimore, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Portland, Ore., and charges $20 a month for Internet service at home. For an additional $30 a month, Clearwire subscribers can get a mobile broadband service that lets them connect laptops wirelessly when they’re on the road. Comcast offers hard-wired service at one-sixth of Clearwire’s speed for $25 a month, or a much faster service for $43.

Mike Sievert, Clearwire’s chief commercial officer, said that many users have unplugged their wired Internet providers, and use the Clearwire service as their only broadband source.

That’s not necessarily bad news for Comcast, which is a major investor in Clearwire.

Comcast markets Clearwire’s 4G service as part of a “quad play’’ bundle, along with Comcast telephone, cable Internet, and cable TV service. Another major Clearwire investor is cellular carrier Sprint Nextel Corp., which already sells Clearwire-compatible laptop cards, and plans to introduce a 4G phone sometime between now and 2010.

The lure of wireless broadband service is even attracting smaller players. MetroPCS Communications Inc., the sixth-largest US cellular carrier, serves 5.4 million subscribers in eight states, including Massachusetts. MetroPCS specializes in prepaid cellphone services which have traditionally been favored by low-income users who generally don’t buy wireless data services. But MetroPCS plans to launch a 4G network in the second half of 2010.

“Cellular operators are making less and less on voice,’’ said analyst Nogee. “They’re looking for new revenue streams.’’ But Nogee added that in a year or two, with so many 4G options available, wireless data service could become a lot cheaper for consumers.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.