It's probably worth mentioning that in Australia, off contract phone are far more popular than they are in the US. We have many competitive pre-paid options, so buying a phone outright often is cheaper, or better value than going on a plan. The Nexus 4 may have found the perfect market for skipping carriers.
I would disagree. LTE is rolling out pretty rapidly, and there are quite a few places where 3G is useless, even on Telstra. Melbourne CBD has been a long running issue, so has parts of Perth and Sydney, apparently.
DC-HSDPA is great but the lack of uplink speed upgrade to go with it seems to be an issue, IMO. I've seen a few situations where I can pull a few megabits/s on 3G but now the uplink is seriously congested, so interactive applications become very poor.
But if you buy this phone now, and you can reasonably expect there to be a new version out in a years time with LTE support... right about the kind of time that you start to get good LTE coverage. It's the same story in the UK. There is only a few trial areas with LTE at the moment.
