T-Mobile isn’t messing around. They are gaining customers at an incredible pace, adding more in recent quarters than some of the bigger carriers combined. The complaint that can still be brought against them is network coverage. They don’t have the coverage areas that Verizon and AT&T have. They do have data speeds that are as fast, or faster, than their larger competitors. If you’re a T-Mobile customer living the San Francisco Bay Area, your T-Mobile LTE speeds are about to get a whole lot faster. T-mobile announced today they are upgrading their network in San Francisco to support Wideband LTE. This will increase upload and download speeds by up to 50%, T-Mobile claims. The Wideband LTE update is already live in San Francisco, Napa, Marin, Contra-Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties. T-Mobile already has Wideband LTE live in 18 other cities and metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, and Atlanta. They are rolling out this LTE upgrade across their existing network and will continue to do so in 2015.
Wideband LTE is the next step in LTE data speeds. It has theoretical data download speeds of 110 Mbps. Real-world speed tests put actual download speeds between 21-90 Mbps. That’s a significant upgrade over the current LTE speeds I get in Richmond, VA. T-Mobile is generally between 10-20Mbps in my area. AT&T is about the same and Verizon is usually slower than them both, at 8-12 Mbps. Upload and download speeds of 20-90 Mbps would rival my home internet speed. This could give me choices other than the two cable carriers in my area. I can’t wait until T-Mobile rolls this out across their entire network. Check out the full press release for all of the details about today’s announcement.
The Greater Bay Area Gets an Upgrade to their Already Blazing-Fast T-Mobile Network The Un-carrier announces its LTE network is the fastest in the Greater Bay Area with data speeds skyrocketing up to 50% with Wideband LTE upgrades. T-Mobile today announced that “it has just made things a whole lot faster in the Greater Bay Area. The Un-carrier upgraded its LTE network, already America’s fastest nationwide 4G LTE network, to Wideband LTE throughout the Bay Area, bringing up to a 50% increase in speed to customers.” Wideband LTE adds more “lanes” to the T-Mobile network, increasing capacity and LTE speeds by giving customers a multi-lane data freeway. Using T-Mobile’s Wideband LTE, customers can download a full 90 minute HD movie in three and half minutes or a whole album in just nine seconds with theoretical peak download speeds of 110 Mbps. “We know Bay Area T-Mobile customers are going to notice and take advantage of the faster LTE speeds Wideband LTE provides,” said Neville Ray, Chief Technology Officer, T-Mobile. “Just because we’ve made an upgrade to the network in these areas, don’t think we are done yet. We are continually working to enhance and expand LTE coverage for our customers every day.”
The Wideband LTE upgrade stretches throughout Alameda, Contra-Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties in the Bay Area. T-Mobile’s Bay Area customers, who are using on average 2.5 GB/month of data, are clocking data speeds that are faster than Verizon and AT&T and almost twice as fast as Sprint. Based on third-party crowd-sourced speed tests, customers from Wine Country to the new Levi’s Stadium are clocking impressive data download speeds, with average speeds of 21 Mbps and observed speeds as high as 90 Mbps in October 2014.
The Greater Bay Area is just the latest area to get a speed boost, as the Un-carrier continues to expand coverage and enhance performance of its 4G LTE network. Wideband LTE has already been rolled out in: Atlanta, GA, Birmingham, AL, Columbus, OH, Connecticut, Dallas, TX, Detroit, MI, Honolulu, HI, Houston, TX, Jacksonville, FL, Las Vegas, NV, Los Angeles, CA, Minneapolis, MN, Mobile, AL, Orlando, FL, Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, Tampa, FL, and the Upstate New York Area. Often imitated, never duplicated, T-Mobile’s Data-Strongâ„¢ network leads the industry and was the first to launch: Nationwide HD Voice in January 2013, Nationwide Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in July 2014, Next-gen Wi-Fi Calling in September 2014.