It's more than that.
I thought I'd listed this in the original post when I talked about it, but I realize I'd omitted the impetus for trying out VZ LTE in the first place. Where I stay when I commute to NoCal has a very strong signal (-65 dBm) but the tower is oversold and there's plenty of WiFi interference (which is another 2.5GHz WiMax weakness- even my Cradlepoint router warns not to retransmit on WiFi channels > 3 else you'll interfere with the WiMax signal) so my thruput bounces all over the place, going from as low as 700 kbit/sec all the way to about 8Mbit/sec- even the Speedtest.net graphs bear this out.
I'm sure some of that is due to to congested pipes (and I've told Sprint more than once about that tower) but I know I get a more-consistent connection on VZ, and I've never had more than ~40% (-68 dBm) LTE signal. Part of that is also due to superior technology, and the better building penetration of 700 MHz. In either case, wherever I've been in the Western US where there's been both VZ LTE and Sprint WiMax signals available, the VZ solution has been more consistent each time.
I've been reading some pretty specious things on these boards re: WiMax vs. LTE (like how any WiMax user can roam to any WiMax network, or how "it's easier to disallow services on LTE than it is on Wimax"), so I take a lot of things that don't have a basis in the underlying technology with a grain of salt.
But in any case it'll be a moot point as every carrier transitions to LTE, Sprint included.
