Verizon Wireless has been hard at work rolling out LTE on its network over the past three years or so, but the company announced today that the nationwide 4G LTE rollout is ‘substantially complete.’

With support for over 500 LTE markets, Verizon’s 4G LTE network now covers 95% of the U.S. population. Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer says the company isn’t totally done just yet. As reported by PC Mag, Palmer says the company plans to add more services to LTE over the next few years and open new markets:

“There remain just a few markets where we have to officially launch 4G LTE, and the vast majority of those markets will be launched by the end of this year. [Third-party studies] all find that Verizon Wireless is there when customers count on us the most, and no other competitor can match our coverage advantage in the U.S.”

In 2014, Verizon plans to launch voice-over-LTE services and HD calling. Shifting voice services to LTE will help Verizon shift traffic off it’s 3G network, but rather than turning on voice-over-LTE on a market-by-market basis, Verizon plans to turn on a big chunk of the country at once to make the change faster. 3G isn’t going away just yet though. Verizon has pledged to keep its 3G network running until 2020

• SourcePC Mag