I can't speak to the business end, and honestly, I don't know much about the technology end, either, but from what I have heard, LTE makes more sense and will be cheaper from a carrier standpoint. For the Verizon endpoint, working with the Vodaphone end, it just makes sense to get off the current platform and move to LTE.

That means better speeds for you and me, and better network utilization. True, text prices are market driven (sms vs IMs, they go over the same netowork, and the same protocols, mostly). but getting lot's of data across, like LTE enables, will be a real step up (supposedly). That is my understanding.