We’ve been hearing about T-Mobile’s upcoming LTE network for quite some time now. They are pretty far behind all the other carriers with their rollout of LTE. But there is something that T-Mobile has that the other carriers don’t. That is a pretty fast fall back network. For Sprint and Verizon, if LTE goes down you have to fall back to their 3G network which maxes out at 3mbps. AT&T has HSPA+ (up to 21mbps) to fall back on, but T-Mobile has HSPA+ (up to 42mbps) to fall back on. Which in most tests, their HSPA+ network is almost as fast as LTE on their competitors.
T-Mobile is working on a system-wide modernization effort, Engineering Vice President Tom Ellefson said that this should improve the T-Mobile experience for nearly every customer on their network. T-Mobile is installing new antennas and machinery alongside their LTE hardware. Which theoretically should mean faster and better coverage for everyone. In fact, Product Management Director Randy Meyerson called it “a Christmas morning moment.”
Usually LTE connectivity requires new hardware in devices. But you may remember that the Galaxy Note 2 has an inactive LTE chip. Which T-Mobile pushed out an update today which makes that LTE chip active. We do know that LTE is coming to Las Vegas and Kansas City first for T-Mobile, so we should see those cities lighting up in the next week or two. T-Mobile has promised to have over 200 million people covered by the end of the year. Now T-Mobile doesn’t have that many customers, that’s just a population number. But we should be seeing a rather fast rollout once it gets started.
How many of you are on T-Mobile and have the Galaxy Note 2? Have you received this update yet? Let us know in the comments below how excited you are to try out T-Mobile’s LTE speeds, especially since they offer unlimited data now.