I would like to say I am correct regarding the 3G towers in my area, especially as my original post was in reference to the CDMA-only towers, and not consumer/business accounts in particular.
As for the OC3 requirement for LTE backhaul, I don't have an IEEE membership, so I cannot read those publications. I didn't see anything pertinent in the other links, so I asked a friend who used to work for VZW, and he said most of the LTE towers in central NC were on one form of fiber or another, but that the speeds varied a lot based on who was providing it. He said they would typically not have less than 100Mbps when using leased backhaul as of a few years ago, but there might be a few sites that had less in more remote areas. He mentioned there was a lot of variety across the US, depending on where you were, and mentioned some microwave backhaul out west that tended to go out when it rained too hard. It sounds like 50/50 would be pretty unusual, but not impossible, for leased backhaul.
The 4G HSPA+ kind of made sense at the time, but 5GE is just a marketing gimmick. I really wish Verizon would get 3G off their towers and refarm that spectrum for something newer, so I could switch away from AT&T and have something usable where I live.
