That is not an official VZW announcement and little or nothing happens to VZW phones unless we hear an official VZW announcement on the VZW news site.
According to what I read. This update being pushed so quickly to the US carriers is because of slow sales of the galaxy gear. Look at the times, they are in prime holiday shopping dates.
Posted from my Galaxy Note 2 via Android Central App
With both the S3 and S4, it seems most of the American carriers have been releasing updates at or around the same time, at least with the last few that were pushed out. I'm not sure if this is because Verizon has loosened their own internal QA process when it comes to Samsung updates or they are doing a better job at coordinating releases or [insert any other reason here], but at least lately Verizon hasn't been months behind like they have been in the past.
Having said that though...
1. This is a "leaked" schedule, and it's highly possible that this schedule has changed since it was leaked. The update may be released today, may be tomorrow...may be a week from now. Either way, I do expect that most of the American carriers will release around the same time, based on the past few that we've seen for this line of phones, but I wouldn't start going nuts if these dates don't turn out to be 100% accurate.
2. Verizon seldom releases much info on updates
until they are actually released. The fact that Verizon hasn't published any public announcement regarding the software update doesn't really mean too much, IMO.
So am im London at this writing with my US based VZ S4. If/when the VZ update roll out happens, is it wise to update the firmware if the option is available to me?
Any thoughts/suggestions appreciated. Peace
Posted via Android Central App
If it were me, I'd wait until I was back in the states. There's a very good chance your phone won't even register the update as being available until you're able to contact a Verizon tower back home, but even if it is, it's probably much safer to wait. If something were to go wrong and you'd need to reset the phone, you may have issues registering on the network...or a number of other things may go amiss.