Verizon's LTE network 'substantially complete' with 500th city

Verizon this morning announced that the fine folks of Parkersburg, WVa., are the proud recipients of its 500th 4G LTE market, and that the rollout of its high-speed data is "substantially complete," blanketing 99 percent of its network. Verizon says more than 95 percent of the U.S. population some 298 million people have access to its LTEnetwork. (Though obviously they're not all Verizon customers.)

Some 57 percent of of data Verizon serves up is done over its LTE network.

So what's next? Verizon at a press event said its Voice Over LTEnetwork VoLTE will start up in earnest in late 2014 with its firstall-LTE smartphone. That will mark the beginning of the end of CDMA, though that's going to be a long wind-down. We're talking years.

Source: Verizon; More: GigaOm

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