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Even thought the global credit crunch continues to bite Verizon Wireless to the industry's surprise announced that is going to stick with its ambitious rollout timetable for LTE.

"We expect that LTE will actually be in service somewhere here in the U.S. probably this time next year," Dick Lynch, CTO of Verizon Communications. Some industry watchers have been predicting a 2010 launch for Verizon's LTE with more markets activated in 2011. But a late 2009 date, with fuller deployments in 2010 would match what Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone said back in April.

This is completely different to what is happening in the WiMAX camp where there is less cash available for network rollouts and possibly less spectrum being auctioned until the current financial crisis passes. "WiMAX deployment will be inhibited for the next 12 months" said Richard Webb, Wireless Analyst for Infonetics Research.

The aggressive timescale would put Verizon at the forefront of worldwide LTE deployments, along with China Mobile and NTT DoCoMo

AT&T, meanwhile, is continuing to say that its 3G network has the headroom, through software upgrades, to keep pace with Verizon's plans and has no plans for LTE until 2012, but they do not have the same upgrade to the air interface as Verizon does in going from CDMA to LTE.

Verizon will be using its newly bought 700MHz spectrum for LTE, which should be cleared of analogue TV broadcasters by the end of February in 2009.

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