Looks like we’ll be seeing some HTC Long-Term Evolution phones available for all those networks rolling out (Verizon and MetroPCS), but perhaps not this year. CEO of HTC, Peter Chou, also added that the phones will incorporate Near-Field Communications technology, which Google Android has been working on deploying.

Information on the entire speech is slight, but Android Central brings us the news,

HTC CEO Peter Chou recently spoke with the GSMA (those are the folks who put on Mobile World Congress) and talked a tad about LTE phones. They’re definitely on the way, though not before sometime next year (that’s a surprise to no one), and the U.S. is likely to get them first because (to the surprise of everyone) we’re actually ahead of the game on LTE. Said Chou:

"We are working on an LTE device for next year, 2011. We think that the U.S. mobile operator will be taking some lead and pushing 4G in the U.S. market. But, however, we are seeing the rest of the world will be deploying LTE networks in 2011. Could be the second half of 2011."

As we well know now, the Samsung Nexus S will be the first phone to deploy NFC, and this HTC phone may well become the next one.

There are still only few LTE networks available across major cities, but it’s about time to start seeing devices to take advantage of them. On the route to actual 4G networks, LTE must be the stepping-stone to get these companies and their networks into actual usage. Now that both Verizon and AT&T have such networks in place, the question will become: who will HTC go with? The two companies have a huge stake in the technology that will use their networks and one might want to grab an exclusive device, or it might yet fall onto both networks.