I think you need to footnote that figure with "claimed". I still don't get 3g at home on 3 out of the 4 networks and yet 3 out of 4 claim coverage here. Also for the next 6 months at least, very few people will go for the extortionate rates EE are offering.
For me, LTE won't be useful until it is ubiquitous enough to consider dropping my broadband at home, until then 3g when I'm out and about is enough. We are several years from that and it's possible it'll never happen.
You know better than to talk about LTE like it's the same everywhere. All the US carriers have implemented it differently due to the laughable spectrum allocation policies of the FCC. There are carriers using 700MHz, 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz for LTE at present and t-mobile are going to use 1.7GHz. To sell an unbranded phone in the US, it would (potentially) have to have 4 radios just for LTE.