Verizon is bullish on LTE, and they have announced that they will have their LTE 4G deployed in 38 cities before the end of the year as well as at 60 airports. This is big news for LTE and Verizon, and it shows that Verizon is serious about LTE and is moving quickly to get it deployed.

The 38 cities to be lucky enough to get LTE first include: Akron, Ohio; Athens, Georgia; Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex/Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Houston, Texas; Jacksonville, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota; Nashville, Tennessee; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York, New York; Oakland, California; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Orlando, Florida; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; San Antonio, Texas; San Diego, California; San Francisco, California; San Jose, California; Seattle/Tacoma, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Tampa, Florida; Washington, D.C.; West Lafayette, Indiana; and West Palm Beach, Florida. (What, no Sheboygen? sub.ed.)

It is expected that business users will be first to flock to Verizon’s LTE deployment as it is rolled out. Verizon says that users can expect speeds of between 5 to 12 Mbps down and 2 to 5 Mpbs up, which is a significant increase over the 3G speeds of today. Verizon will be leveraging its 700Mhz spectrum for the LTE deployment and will continue to roll out LTE to other cities next year.

Verizon has not talked much about LTE 4G devices, but it is expected that the initial LTE 4G offers (at least to start with) will be limited to USB LTE 4G modems with mini-PCIe offerings from leading mobile computing manufacturers that are expected at some point. At least a couple of LTE smartphone devices are expected, but if rumors are true about Verizon getting the iPhone early next year, we suspect that it will not support LTE and only CDMA, according to our sources. The most likely early LTE smartphones are likely to be Android-based models, according to what our sources tell us.