Verizon Communications CEO Lowell McAdam announced that 23 per cent of Verizon’s customer base used LTE phones at the end of the fourth quarter, up from 16 per cent at the end of Q3. McAdam also said that 85 per cent of Verizon’s postpaid net adds in the fourth quarter purchased LTE smartphones. Further, the carrier said it expects overall data traffic to grow by a factor of seven during the next three years.

“We are very pleased with the performance of the (LTE) network,” said Mike Haberman, VP of network engineering for Verizon Wireless, noting that Verizon now covers 273.5m POPs with LTE, or roughly 89 per cent of its US footprint. He said the carrier expects to largely complete its LTE network build-out by the middle of next year.

FierceWireless: Verizon: Almost 50% of data traffic now goes over LTE network; TelecomTV content partner.