LTE has taken off in a big way in the United States. Not only is it substantially faster than previous HSDPA and CDMA “3G” standards, but it’s often faster than speeds offered by cable ISPs. Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint have been falling all over themselves rolling out new coverage areas as fast as possible. (See: Network Vision: Sprint’s path to domination.) Now, Verizon is continuing to bet big with LTE: Come next year, Verizon will begin selling devices that only support LTE.

At the Deutsche Bank dbAccess Media, Internet, and Telecom conference yesterday, Verizon came out strongly in favor of LTE-only phones. Fran Shammo, CFO of Verizon, made it clear that once voice over LTE (VoLTE) is rolled out across the network, LTE-only phones will hit store shelves. Last year, Verizon had announced an early 2014 date for VoLTE roll-out, so it’s no surprise that Shammo sees late 2014 as the perfect time to begin dropping CDMA support.

This is a good thing for customers. Wider coverage across the nation for super-fast mobile broadband is nothing to thumb our noses at. Knowing that CDMA can’t be relied upon as a back-up will certainly spur better support of LTE. It’s not just about faster data speeds, though. VoLTE is a big deal. Not only does it leave old circuit switching telecommunications technology behind in favor of purely packet-based communication, but it offers much better sounding voice calls as well. The narrow band codec that we’re used to remains supported under VoLTE, but the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) codec, or simply HD Voice, is available for LTE-to-LTE connections. By deprecating the old tech, we will be hastening better sounding calls across the board. (See: Next-generation LTE radios with VoLTE will reduce power consumption by 50%.)

Verizon is talking a good game about how dropping support for CDMA will substantially reduce costs of devices and allow for deeper subsidies. It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. LTE coverage is still far from universal, and we can only cross our fingers and hope that Verizon will have the follow-through to reach every single market already covered by 3G. While the CDMA network isn’t going to be shut down in the immediate future, the support of VoLTE will hasten that move. When CDMA networks are no longer profitable enough, they will cease to exist. That will leave equipment without LTE chips pretty much unusable. Moving over legacy customers will be hellish for all parties involved.

This is still up in the air, and market realities can change between now and the end of 2014. We’ll see LTE-only phones start to ship, but it will undoubtedly take years for CDMA support to die off completely. As far as Verizon passing on the savings to customers with LTE-only phones, I’ll think I’ll hold my breath on that one.

Now read our full LTE explainer