Nicki Palmer, Chief Network Officer at Verizon Wireless, said today that the carrier will offer LTE only smartphones to customers late next year. The revelation was made by Palmer in a conference call with reporters. LTE only smartphones will mean that Verizon will have to get its voice service to run on LTE as well, and the carrier is hopeful that it will be able to do that by next year.
Voice over LTE or VoLTE will offer customers additional data services that can be coupled with the voice service and it will also greatly improve call quality. With the declining costs of LTE radios, smartphones are going to get more affordable. Not only that, LTE smartphones will not carry multiple cellular radios, which will not only make smartphones sleeker, it will also bring a decrease in their prices. Verizon also announced today that its 4G LTE network covers 500 markets in the U.S. and that its roll out of the LTE network is virtually complete. The carrier is now expected to focus its energies towards VoLTE as well as LTE-A.
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