AT&T added more markets to its LTE deployment Wednesday, bringing it close to 400 markets and making the year-end target of 420 look easily within its grasp.

The markets AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) had added today are:

"Our new total LTE market count is 397, covering 225 million people," a spokesman for AT&T tells us.

Here's how all the operators now stack up for 4G LTE:

Why this matters
At this pace, AT&T should easily beat its stated target of 420 markets covered with 4G LTE by the end of 2013. The number to watch, however, might instead be the number of potential customers covered. Even as AT&T has added more than 20 new small markets in August and early September, its estimate of people covered hasn't budged from 225 million.

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— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading