Verizon Wireless announced today that its nationwide 4G LTE rollout is “substantially complete,” serving more than 95 percent of the U.S. population.

With most of this round of network building done, Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer gave a tantalizing look at the carrier’s to-do list for the next two years, including more spectrum, LTE-only smartphones, and HD voice.

“There remain just a few markets where we have to officially launch 4G LTE, and the vast majority of those markets will be launched by the end of this year,” Palmer said. Citing PCMag.com’s Fastest Mobile Networks study, she added that third-party studies “all find that Verizon Wireless is there when customers count on us the most, and no other competitor can match our coverage advantage in the U.S.”

Today’s announcement gives Verizon 500 LTE markets, with its first penetration into Alaska coming next month, Palmer said. The company is also partnering with 20 rural carriers in 14 states to extend LTE into their coverage areas; 10 of those networks have already been launched.

What’s Next: VoLTE, HD Voice and LTE-Only Phones
Verizon Wireless will launch voice-over-LTE services in 2014, with “rich communications services” and HD calling. The launch won’t go city by city; the carrier will turn on a big chunk of the country at once, Palmer said. “It will quickly become big for us,” she said.

Moving voice to LTE will help accelerate the shift of Verizon’s traffic off of the 3G network. Right now 57 percent of Verizon’s data traffic is on LTE, and that’s only poised to grow. By the end of 2014, Verizon will be able to introduce LTE-only smartphones, Palmer said.

The company has resolved to keep its 3G network up until 2020, but starting in 2015 it’ll be able to shift some of the 1900Mhz spectrum it currently uses for 3G over to LTE, to manage increasing demand. That move will follow activation of Verizon’s 1700/2100Mhz AWS spectrum, which “we’re going to put aggressively to use in all markets,” Palmer said.

So yes, you read it right: Verizon will be running LTE on 700, 1900, and 1700/2100Mhz. Carrier aggregation, part of the LTE-Advanced standards, will be key to knitting all of that together so phones see it as one big, happy network. 

“We’ll deploy the various features of LTE-A, like carrier aggregation, where we need it, when we need it,” Palmer said. “We’re aggressively looking at carrier aggregation.”

Speed Isn’t Everything
Verizon Wireless didn’t win most of our 30 Fastest Mobile Networks cities (AT&T was often faster), but it had the broadest national LTE coverage across our more than 20,000 miles of driving. For Palmer, that’s just fine.

“We are engineering our network for 5-12Mbps on the downlink and 2-5Mbps on the uplink, and on average, we’re exceeding that right now,” Palmer said. “It’s about more than just speed. You need speed where you want it when you want it, and that’s what we provide. My aim is to provide a comprehensive solution that includes fast speed, but also includes coverage, performance, and reliability. The market has shown and our customers show that that is what they want.”