Verizon is showing its usual arrogance over its network via an interview with CTO Tony Melone from Cnet. While I’ll be the first to admit, Verizon really outshines the other carriers, including our Magenta at CES, hands down that doesn’t mean they have the strongest offering of all. With that in mind, we won’t deny that they came out swinging with their selection of LTE offerings but T-Mobile is promising 25 phones with a good deal of them running 4G so the battle is just getting started, it’s not over by a long shot.

When asked about T-Mobile’s announcement of HSPA+ doubled speeds to 42Mbps he basically shrugs off the move as a necessary but not cure all step. Everyone is in agreement that HSPA+ and its software upgrades along with limited hardware requirements provides a less expensive solution for T-Mobile to hit 4G speeds while Verizon has to invest in the infrastructure for an entire network buildout.

While we’ve seen screenshot after screenshot of users getting speeds of 5+ Mbps on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network, Melone doesn’t think that’s typical or spread across the network. Well, the same can be said about Verizon’s LTE, I’ve seen reports of speeds north of 25Mbps and in the 3Mbps range so obviously location plays a role. The fact that he is promising speeds of 5-12Mbps across the network and as a typical experience is the hype machine in motion that Verizon is so good at. However, all this will come at a price and a premium that is typical Verizon, you’ll pay to play.

It’s certainly possible Verizon’s LTE network might be faster for some than T-Mobile and vice versa, but one thing is for sure, T-Mobile won’t tax you up the wazoo and that’s plenty reason to stick around.

Read the whole interview at Cnet