It’s Uncarrier 8.0 today, and John Legere has a few new things to announce today. This particular announcement is from Neville Ray which is their CTO, and in charge of their network. T-Mobile has been improving their network over the past year or two with 4G LTE, and Wideband LTE. Currently, T-Mobile is covering 260 million people in the US. They expect to hit 300 million by the end of 2015. Which is astounding, when you think about it.
As most of you know, T-Mobile has been buying up 700MHz spectrum from Verizon and a ton of other regional carriers all year. They’ve finally started rolling out 700MHz spectrum in a few cities. And starting today, those with a Band 12 compatible device (which includes the Nexus 6) in Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis and Washington, DC will be able to use 700MHz band. What’s so great about 700MHz? Well the lower the spectrum, the further it will cover, and the better it will penetrate buildings. Which explains why T-Mobile’s coverage is not so great indoors. However with the 700MHz spectrum now rolling out, that should change soon.
Ray also announced that T-Mobile customers are using on average about 3.5GB of data per month, which leads all the other carriers. So in 2015, T-Mobile will be adding more and more capacity and coverage. Which is the reason why they are rolling out Wideband LTE so that when more users are using T-Mobile’s network, the speeds won’t slow down as much.
So there’s not a ton of news on the network front, but definitely some great news here. Hopefully they can get the 700MHz rolled out to more cities in the next few months. Really excited to see how well it works for those that are in Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis and Washington, DC on T-Mobile. If you live in one of those cities, let us know in the comments below how well it works for you.