Verizon to Launch 4G LTE in 30 'NFL Cities' This Year

Are you ready for some football...and some 4G? Verizon Wireless told a group of enterprise IT managers on Wednesday that the company would have LTE networks in 30 "National Football League cities" before the end of 2010, according to a report by eWeek. Launching in large metro areas like New York, San Fransisco, Seattle, and Kansas City makes sense because Verizon has the most potential customers there.

Verizon plans to cover the rest of the U.S. with LTE in stages by 2013, according to the report. The first phase of Verizon's 4G plan is to support relatively high data speeds from the start, with 5 to 12 Mbps downloads and 2 to 5 Mbps uploads.

We're happy to see Verizon committing to putting up 4G in major metropolitan areas by end of the year, but to access LTE speeds users will need phones that support it. Since we haven't seen any LTE phones from Verizon yet, we hope those will also start appearing before the end of the year.