AT&T on Wednesday offered the first details of its planned rollout of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services for cell phone customers. LTE provides much faster data transmission services that AT&T’s existing 3G network can provide.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]AT&T will roll out LTE services this summer, with service initially available in five markets: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. By the end of the year, AT&T plans to increase its LTE footprint to 15 markets in total, with the potential to reach 70 million customers. AT&T also said it plans to have 20 4G-capable devices available for purchase in 2011, “with some of those being LTE capable.”

The move puts AT&T in the LTE game, but AT&T remains far behind rival Verizon. Verizon continues an aggressive rollout of its own LTE service, which debuted in December of 2010 in 38 cities. Verizon hopes to have 175 markets served with LTE by the end of the year.

So far, there’s been no word from Apple on when to expect an iPhone model with LTE service. Both the AT&T and Verizon versions of the iPhone 4 support each company’s 3G service only.

Hat tip: GigaOM