AT&T CTO John Donovan this morning announced the cities involved in the company’s LTE service rollout this year. The launch will start off with five cities this summer and a strong focus on AT&T’s home state of Texas. Dallas, Houston and San Antonio would be covered with the faster speeds along with Atlanta and Chicago.
Another 10 or more areas would launch in the second half of the year, or enough to potentially reach 70 million people by the end of 2011. About 20 4G-branded devices are due to ship this year, though AT&T admitted that only some of those would actually be LTE while the rest are just HSPA+ 3G.
The AT&T LTE launch is likely to be underwhelming relative to Verizon’s. Its close rival launched in 38 cities and promised coverage of about 110 million people, including in population centers like New York City and San Francisco.
