A new report from research firm OpenSignal found that T-Mobile LTE is currently live in nine United States cities ahead of the company's official network launch expected tomorrow. Only Kansas City and Las Vegas were specifically mentioned as launch markets, though the firm notes they've also seen significant LTE presence in Seattle, Denver, New Orleans, New York, San Diego, and the Bay Area.

"We've observed a respectable 25 Mbps average download speed, an 8 Mbps average upload speed and an average latency of 40ms," notes OpenSignal. The firm acknowledges that these speeds are being seen over an un-launched network and using a very small sample size.

T-Mobile's LTE network is expected to be officially launched tomorrow, alongside the company's new pricing plans, which formally signal the death of long-term contracts at the company. T-Mobile's also expected to give more details on other aspects of their "uncarrier" strategy, which include the death of handset subsidies. The company is also expected to finally offer the iPhone later this year.

T-Mobile has plenty of catching up to do with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint having healthy leads on their own LTE deployments. T-Mobile has stated they want to reach 100 million potential customers by the middle of the year.

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A new IHS iSuppli Wireless Communications Special Report predicts that the global LTE subscriber total should surpass 100 million users sometime this year. According to the firm, that number is then expected to skyrocket to 198.1 million in 2013, which would be a 115 percent jump from the 92.3 million subscribers seen last year. The lion's share of that growth is courtesy of Verizon here in the States, with AT&T steadily gaining ground. Both Sprint and T-Mobile should significantly add to that total this year with LTE builds of their own.

We've noted several times how Verizon's sale of their DSL and landline assets to Fairpoint and Frontier was strategically brilliant (unless you're one of the impacted customers). Not only did Verizon sell both companies millions of neglected customers and lines they didn't want to maintain or upgrade, the deals offloaded huge amounts of Verizon debt onto these companies (driving Fairpoint into bankruptcy) while netting Verizon a huge tax write off.

The FCC has released more detail on the conditions imposed on Dish's planned LTE network in exchange for receiving a waiver on conditions requiring that spectrum be used for satellite phone services. After recently unanimously approving the Dish waiver, the FCC yesterday released two documents (pdf) getting more specific about the conditions.

Continuing the company's industry-leading LTE deployment, Verizon Wireless today announced that the carrier has added another nineteen LTE markets to their network footprint. According to Verizon, December 20 will see LTE service light up across nineteen new markets in Washington, Arizona, Indiana, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, Colorado, and New Mexico. You can find a bevy of launch announcements citing specific locations over at the Verizon Wireless website. Verizon recently stated that all current EVDO areas should have LTE by the middle of next year, six months ahead of schedule.

AT&T's LTE deployment keeps chugging along, the carrier announcing new LTE launches in four new (admittedly small) markets: Auburn-Opelika, Ala.; Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; Grand Rapids, Mich. and Nashua, New Hampshire. AT&T's handy dandy LTE deployment pdf now states that the company has deployed LTE in 109 markets, covering more than 150 million potential customers. The company's entire current HSPA footprint should be covered with LTE by the end of 2014, reaching 300 million potential customers.

Fiber to the home providers in Japan are having to lower their rates to compete with fast, cheap and reliable LTE services in the country. "Fixed-broadband giants NTT East and NTT West have been forced to slash their FTTH prices for new subscribers by an eye-watering 34 percent from ¥5,460 (US $66.70) to ¥3,600 ($34) per month to try and re-ignite their subscriber growth and stop the outflow of subscribers to cheaper LTE mobile broadband services," Tony Brown, senior analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media, on the company's blog (via Fierce Wireless). That may bode well for incumbent American telcos AT&T and Verizon, who have decided to hang up on wired broadband entirely across more than half of their footprint in order to focus primarily on LTE. Granted, Japanese LTE and FTTH carriers see significantly more competition....

AT&T's LTE deployment continues to gain steam, with the company announcing availability of the faster wireless network in another eight markets. According to a slew of press releases, AT&T's now offering LTE in Annapolis, Maryland; York, Pennsylvania, Daytona Beach, Florida; Tacoma, Washington; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Louisville, Kentucky; and Provo, Utah. AT&T's LTE network is now available in almost 90 markets, with the company promising 100 LTE markets by the end of this year, and to have their entire HSPA+ footprint upgraded to LTE by the end of next year. You can find AT&T's list of launched cities and their coverage map here.

Update: Locals in Daytona Beach say they're seeing speeds above 40 Mbps downstream on the freshly-launched and largely-unoccupied network:

Sprint is poised to turn on service in nine new markets, while many people wait for the company to seriously deploy LTE in some larger cities. According to a Sprint press release, Sprint has started working on LTE upgrades in markets like Minneapolis and Oakland, with a full service launch expected sometime before January. Sprint is turning markets on almost as soon as they're even remotely deployed, resulting in many users with LTE devices seeing network connectivity before commercial launch.

While the pre-launch availability is nice, Sprint has recently resorted to announcing a lot of upcoming LTE markets, as opposed to actually available LTE markets. The carrier realizes that they're getting a lot of new iPhone users who may find themselves disappointed with LTE coverage compared to Verizon (417 markets) and AT&T (80 markets).

AT&T continues to deploy LTE, bringing the faster service this Halloween to several additional communities. According to AT&T, LTE services are now available in Ft. Myers, Florida, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Knoxville, Tennessee. With these launches, AT&T's websites says the company now offers LTE services in 80 markets, with several more on deck before the end of the year. The company hopes to have their entire HSPA+ footprint upgraded to LTE by the end of 2013.

Apple today announced the release of the iPad mini. The device, which is smaller (7.9 inch) and lighter (0.68 pounds) than its larger cousin, comes in two colors and is available in 16, 32, and 64 gigabyte versions.

Sprint today announced that the company is preparing to launch LTE services in an additional 21 markets "in the coming months." During the recent launch of the iPhone 5 Sprint proclaimed that they'd be launching LTE in at least a hundred more markets before the end of the year, hoping to downplay their currently skimpy LTE coverage. More attention has been brought to their small LTE footprint lately after a study proclaimed that their LTE maps are essentially totally fantasy.

Speaking at the CTIA MobileCon tradeshow this week, Verizon Wireless noted that they're ahead of schedule with their LTE deployment, but also informed attendees that they plan to have their 2G and 3G networks shuttered entirely by 2021. The company says they hope to have all current EVDO network areas covered with LTE by the end of the year. Currently, Verizon says about 35% of their mobile data traffic traveled over their 4G LTE network in September. LTE users currently use the 3G/CDMA network for voice services, so the next big initiative will be to migrate users to voice over LTE, an initiative that Verizon also announced will now be delayed from 2013 to 2014 in order to perfect technical issues.

Dish continues to hint they need more spectrum if they're to seriously enter the wireless sector and compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Speaking at the PCIA wireless infrastructure conference, Dish boss Charlie Ergen stated the company needs more 40 MHz of 2 GHz S-band spectrum to compete, and reiterated that the company will likely have to partner with somebody else to make their wireless ambitions a reality.

The FCC has approved AT&T's plan to use WCS spectrum to aid in their deployment of mobile (and potentially fixed residential) LTE services. The agency began circulating an order this week allowing AT&T a 20 MHz chunk of spectrum in the 2.3 GHz WCS to use for LTE.

Sprint today announced that the company has launched their new LTE network in five additional locations. According to this Sprint press statement, the company's new LTE network is now available in Lawrence, Kansas; Topeka, Kansas; Wichita, Kansas; Waukegan-Lake County, Illinois; and Barnstable-Hyannis/Mid-Cape, Massachusetts. "In addition to the 19 cities we have already launched, we recently announced that Sprint 4G LTE will be available in more than 100 cities in the coming months,” said Bob Azzi, senior vice president-Network, Sprint. "To counter some of the iPhone 5 coverage focusing on their small LTE footprint, Sprint recent stated they'd be launching 100 or so markets in the next few months, including New York, Miami Los Angeles and Chicago.