Ever since T-Mobile started their Un-Carrier initiative, they’ve been changing up the wireless industry with change after change that other carriers couldn’t help but adopt, lest they start losing customers to Magenta. The mission of the Un-Carrier is crystallized in the Un-Carrier Manifesto, and the end of the Manifesto reads, “We are the Un-carrier. And we will be un-relenting.” As part of that promise, T-Mobile has not only continued to brute-force innovation and customer-first actions in the wireless industry, they’ve also ruthlessly chased down the competition on all fronts, including network improvements. A new press release from T-Mobile’s chief technology officer, Neville Ray, goes over just a few of the ways in which T-Mobile has been working to keep their network relevant.
T-Mobile’s 4G LTE now handles about 90% of their total data traffic, with Voice Over LTE handling roughly 61% of the Un-Carrier’s voice traffic on their network. In total, about 231 million people are covered with T-Mobile’s ultra high-speed Wideband LTE network. Extended Range LTE, on the other hand, brings better coverage and building penetration to 225 million people. Ray went on to point out that T-Mobile was the first to roll out 4×4 MIMO on their network, along with 256 and 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. This means that compatible handsets can see speeds up to 400 megabits per second. On the 5G side of things, T-Mobile has hit 12 gigabits per second in field tests alongside 5G hardware partner Ericsson, and they’ve managed to secure a large amount of 700 MHz spectrum, which can be used to build out a far-reaching, high-speed network.
After touting the Un-Carrier’s own network improvements, Ray reaffirmed that T-Mobile has been the network speed champion for 11 consecutive quarters. Along with an infographic bearing Ookla speedtest aggregated results over October of 2016, and used the chart to systematically slam everybody else. After a quick primer on why upload speeds are important with all of the media creation that everybody does on mobile networks these days, Ray immediately ripped into Verizon and their recent boast of a 50% overall network improvement, as well as Sprint’s claims that they are within 1% of the network quality and reliability of their competition. He even went as far as to call Sprint out on slashing their network capex while sitting at the bottom of the chart. Ookla’s Speedtest app doesn’t always tell the full story, so Ray backed up those claims by saying that the FCC and OpenSignal rank T-Mobile as the fastest overall US cellular network. Ray ends the letter on a high note, telling users that the Un-Carrier has no plans to slow down any time soon.