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Only five percent of Verizon customers on LTE, pooled family data still on track for 2012

Only five percent of Verizon customers on LTE, pooled family data still on track for 2012

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Verizon's CFO Fran Shammo stated that only five percent of the company's customers are using its LTE network. She went on to say that shared data plans for families with multiple devices are still coming later in 2012.

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Verizon's not at all shy about touting the size of its LTE network, but so far only five percent of its customers are actually using it. That's according to CFO Fran Shammo, who says that Verizon is "playing a very delicate balancing act here that I don't want to spend any more money on my 3G network." Of course, Verizon's best-selling smartphone is the iPhone, which is still 3G — the company actually built out its 3G network to handle Apple's device. The company also still sells an enormous number of feature phones that lack LTE, putting a lot of pressure on the older network. That's in contrast to most of its top-tier devices, which primarily run on the newer, less-congested 4G network, only occasionally falling back to 3G — say when a 4G signal isn't available. In response, the company is doing what it can to nudge people onto it with things like the double data promotion.

In other Verizon news, wireless families should be able to get single bills later this year. In response to a question about the timeframe for shared data plans on Verizon, Shammo answered "you'll see something launched midyear this year from us."