By the end of this year, the Verizon Communications’ current fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) and ultralong-haul fiber network deployments will be more than halfway complete, chief executive officer Ivan Seidenberg said Wednesday in a keynote address at the NXTComm trade show. But the company is already planning for future network migrations years down the road.

In a prepared video segment, Seidenberg introduced the NXTComm crowd to the Bayers, a family of four in Massapequa, N.Y., that is the one millionth customer of Verizon’s Fios FTTP service. Three years after its launch, Fios is now available in 16 states (Rhode Island was added to the list this week). By the end of this year, it will be available to 9 million households, halfway toward its ultimate goal of 18 million homes by the end of the decade. Seidenberg now claims to have more than 1 million Fios customers and is “closing in quickly” on half a million video subscribers.

Though Verizon is now transitioning from broadband passive optical networks (BPON) to gigabit PON, it is already considering future migrations beyond GPON. “By the end of the decade, we’ll be preparing for the next generation of [FTTP] electronics,” Seidenberg said. “Speeds that rival what we deliver over our most advanced business networks today.”

Meanwhile, Verizon expects to add 6,000 miles of fiber this year to its all-optical ultralong-haul U.S. network, passing the halfway point in the planned 50,000-mile network.

Seidenberg also described the future of the company’s wireless services as the broadband network outside the fiber-fed home. While Verizon is upgrading its wireless broadband network today with RevA, by the end of the decade, it will be ready four fourth-generation wireless broadband, which will open the door to a new world of applications. “By 2012, there will be 50 million consumer devices in use with embedded wireless capabilities,” he said. “The innovation curve with wireless is just beginning.”

“We used to say, ‘Before you leave the house, you need your cell phone, your car keys and your wallet,’” he added. “With the next wave of innovation and converged services, the day is not far off when all you’ll need to take is your cell phone.”