Looks like the Big Blue has now started a battle with rival the Big Red on the LTE front with an article on the WSJ claiming that an AT&T exec has said people won’t be able to make much use of next generation wireless networks for another 2 years.

The Big Red is aiming to roll out their LET network in a minimum of 25 markets covering some 100 million customers by the end of this year, and AT&T is also adopting LTE but will not be able to offer it until next year, so a bit of sour grapes then.

John Donovan, Chief Technology Officer at AT&T has struck out at Verizon Wireless by stating that Verizon may be turning to the new LTE technology before it is fully mature and it will be some time before developers can work out the kinks in mobile phone able to use LTE.

Donovan went on to state that it will be 2012 when you will have decent handsets, decent quality of handsets and decent choice of handset and that it’s going to be difficult to engineer and that first LTE handset will drain the battery and is going to be a “fat brick.”

Of course that’s only because Verizon will beat AT&T to LTE if the boot where on the other foot, Donovan would no doubt be praising the advancement of the LTE handset.