Last week, the FCC gave the green light to T-Mobile’s purchase of 700MHz A-Block spectrum from Verizon. Now the big magenta carrier has put up an official blog post to share the news of the deal's completion and shed some light on just what it plans to do with its shiny new airwaves.
T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray explains that the 700MHz spectrum will enable T-Mo to improve 4G LTE coverage for 158 million consumers in 9 of the top 10 and 21 of the top 30 U.S. markets. Those include New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Washington D.C. and Detroit.
Ray adds that T-Mobile subscribers will begin to see the benefits of this 700MHz rollout as early as the end of 2014. Once rolled out, T-Mo customers can expect faster and more reliable in-building coverage.
Ray went on to reiterate T-Mobile’s plans to repurpose its 2G/EDGE service into 4G LTE coverage. Doing so will provide LTE service to many customers that currently only get EDGE coverage and will also improve existing LTE service in other locales.
Finally, T-Mobile’s CTO points out that not only has Ol’ Magenta deployed 10+10MHz LTE coverage in 43 of the top 50 U.S. markets, but that it’s also started to deploy Wideband LTE with 15+15MHz and 20+20MHz coverage. Ray says that these widened airwaves can provide download speeds of up to 147Mbps.
T-Mobile has long been working to build out and improve its 4G LTE network, originally launching it in March 2013 and announcing that it had achieved nationwide coverage months later. Now T-Mo is working to continue its LTE buildout using its existing 2G airwaves as well as its new 700MHz spectrum, the latter of which ought to make using T-Mo LTE indoors a much-improved experience.
Do you have access to T-Mobile’s LTE network? If so, how has it been treating you lately?
Via T-Mobile
