With Sprint’s Qchat purportedly set to roll out nationally soon, Verizon’s making sure everyone know that they’re not just sitting on their hands.

This morning, Verizon confirmed that they will be rolling out improved Push-to-talk services and phones later this summer. They didn’t mention what technology they’d be using, nor did they give a specific time frame.

In addition to its larger PTT userbase, Sprint’s current solution (iDEN) is already substantially quicker to connect than Verizon’s. With Qchat set to speed things up for Sprint even more, Verizon’s going to have to make some big improvements to stay in the push-to-talk game.

Thing is, neither can be declared victorious until one of them figures out how to prevent people from using the push-to-talk loudspeaker while standing in a crowded coffee shop. Seriously. Stop doing that.

[Via Phonescoop]