4G LTE used to be pretty limited and was just in the big cities, but over the last couple years, carriers such as Verizon and AT&T have really expanded their coverage to far more cities and markets. Verizon or more specifically CFO Fran Shammo, made a big announcement today at the Wells Fargo Securities Technology, Media and Telecom conference.
During his talk, Fran said that Verizon Wireless has shifted their completion date of 4G LTE coverage by six months to mid-2013. Previously, they had the end of 2013 in mind. This is great news for current and upcoming new customers.
And while Verizon’s commercials showing off different bar graphs to “test groups” are a bit boring, the fact is that their 4G LTE network covers 250 million Americans or about 80% of the population. Not only that but in the third quarter, 4G made up 35% of their total data traffic and 15 million postpaid LTE enabled devices are currently in use.
With AT&T not planning on completing their rollout of 4G LTE by the end of 2014 and Sprint’s LTE still in a fraction of the market, Verizon has a definitive edge in the marketplace and despite their questionable Shared Data plans, still remain a top choice for Americans.