Two things:

1) The LTE data rates are in-line with the 3G rates. This is a very pleasant surprise. Still commitment-free. No contract required.

2) Of course Verizon is including the hotspot functionality with their plans while AT&T isn’t. AT&T seems to be doing everything in their power to ensure you don’t buy service from them. That’s one way to fix a crap network: drive people away. 

Rene Ritchie nailed the date of the iPad event, no reason to think he hasn’t nailed this as well (from the same source).

But I still wonder about the price points. Apple got AT&T (and later Verizon) to offer some pretty killer 3G deals. Will they be able to do the same for 4G?

Hi-def screen has been more or less a forgone conclusion for months (I cannot wait to see what it looks like). Better processor is a no-brainer. But this is the big news in the Bloomberg story from Tim Culpan, Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano:

Apple is bringing LTE to the iPad before the iPhone because the tablet has a bigger battery and can better support the power requirements of the newer technology, said one of the people.

Makes sense to me. Sarah and I talked about this possibility on iPad Today (about 4:30 in) a few weeks ago. 

And if the iPad does gain LTE, the logical next step is that the next iPhone would gain the technology as well. But I’m with John Gruber, it’s more likely, but not a slam dunk. Every single person I know who has a 4G phone still just bitches about the awful battery life when LTE is enabled. There will need to be more power-efficient chips (which seems likely) and/or Apple will have to pull out some battery life magic (also likely) to ensure an LTE iPhone this year.

Danny Sullivan notes the difference between the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S II Skyrocket on AT&T. Both are actually running on the same network, but the Galaxy gets the all-important “4G” moniker. 

Except that it’s bullshit.

As Sullivan points out, the iPhone and the Galaxy are getting the exact same speeds. That’s because AT&T’s network is actually HSPA+, which the iPhone supports but refuses to call “4G” even though AT&T does. 

Why does AT&T call it 4G? Because they were one to two years behind their competitors in rolling out an actual 4G network. In other words, when all hope fades, lie. 

In AT&T’s parlance, real 4G is “4G LTE”. What a fucking joke.

Says John Gruber:

The original EDGE iPhone is also a good example of Apple’s relatively conservative pace of adoption of cell network technology. AT&T (née Cingular) already offered 3G service when the iPhone was announced. But coverage wasn’t widespread, and Apple was concerned about its effect on battery life.

If the iPhone comes to Verizon, soon enough there will be a model that supports LTE. But Apple isn’t going to lead the way on that.

Agreed. As I wrote back in June:

More importantly, I’m not even sure we’ll see a 4G-capable iPhone next year. As Apple proved with the first iPhone (which wasn’t 3G despite 3G being fairly ubiquitous at the time), they care more about the overall experience than about being the first to have a nice-sounding feature. Users laughed at the notion that 3G capabilities severely dinged battery life — until the iPhone 3G came out and that’s exactly what happened.

With 4G, by all accounts, the battery ding is even worse. Also, 4G is still slowly deploying around the country, and some carriers (read: AT&T) won’t have it really deployed for a long, long time. In other words, don’t be surprised if next year Apple still doesn’t have a 4G version of the device. Everyone will bitch about it, but in Apple’s view, it likely just won’t be worth it yet.

That’s why we’ll see a CDMA and not an LTE version at first.