T-Mobile LTE Reaches 154 Deployed Markets

T-Mobile really is flying.

This shows how slow Sprint's network upgrade initiative is going.

Still no Sprint LTE officially launched in DC.

Looks like they launched a bunch of markets over Labor Day weekend. Was a great present getting back from a trip and seeing LTE pop up on my N4 here in Saint Louis. While the initial coverage is a bit spotty, the area of coverage is pretty large already. Unfortunately they don't have any good coverage maps detailing exactly where LTE coverage extends.

Until then, the crowdsourced maps at »sensorly.com/map/4G/US/U ··· e_310260 aren't bad.

We've been the largest TMO spectrum-starved market until the Leap-TMO spectrum swap last year. Glad to see the efforts of all of those spectrum swaps coming to fruition!

I'd prefer to see them spend a bit more investment on expanding their footprint. Not all of us spend all our time in metropolitan areas or large town areas. At the same time: I understand the market dynamics: The higher-population centers are where the return on investments are.

So far I'm pleased with T-Mobile, but I suspect I'm going to be unhappy the first time I travel.

Jim

All T-Mobile has in my area is roaming which they are probably doing off at&t so why wouldn't I just get service from them? Until T-mobile actually steps up to the plate then can STFU already. They hope to cover 200 million? Oh so their goal it to leave over 35% of the US out.

Sprint has got back the lead from t- mobile! »newsroom.sprint.com/news ··· 734546=1

Still no LTE officially launched by Sprint in DC... Not sure what they're doing, but whatever it is, it isn't working. Hopeless.

Doesn't much reflect the reality I've experienced, Sprint vs. TMO, on 2G/3G, in my area.

Jim

If by lead you mean launching dozens of small town markets to keep the launched markets number high and impressive while large population ones flounder, then yes.

I average a massive 0.20 Mbps down on my note 2 and gs3 here in the victorville/ Hesperia area of california. I dont even bother trying to use data until i get home to my wifi. Thanks T-Mobile!

Since they're crowdsourced, only contributions are showing up. If no one in your area contributes on your chosen carrier(s) (ie by installing the sensorly app) then you won't see accurate mapping. Since it's device based, rather than relying on the carriers, it's more accurate as long as people in your area use it.

Still no Lte in Cleveland. So that makes two of us.

At least they aren't ignoring small town markets unlike TMobile.

I do wonder what is holding Sprint up. T-mobile and Sprint are both replacing all of the equipment on the towers they are upgrading, so it would seem to reason that they would have similar deployment times. Unless it is backhaul slowing Sprint down (which T-mobile already had plenty of in place), I don't understand why they're taking so long.

St Louis is really going to be seeing better service on T-mobile with the additional spectrum. It seems that they are conservative in the first few months after rolling out LTE in a market, and that coverage gets better over time.

If T-mobile doesn't have coverage in your area, then they are not targeting you as a customer. It's one of the reasons they cost less.

Are you throttled? That doesn't sound right.

I just went through victorville a month ago. I had 3+megabit speedtests in several areas there.

But i'm all about finding the carrier that works best in the places you live and visit. If t-mobile is not that carrier then you should switch. Seriously, as in today. Sell your GS3 and note2, pay off the etf and sign up for Sprint/ATT/VZW, whichever one works for you.

not being throttle never have according to tmobile. We don't even come close to 1/5 of our data plan. Have gone back and fourth with tmobile over this for over a year. At one point we received a discount. We were told basically the service here is that bad. 92344-92345 area.
We recently took a trip and i was getting lte speeds in several locations just passing through on the freeway. Hell i wish we had 4g speeds.

Ive lived here for 5 years now and have never seen that. I have actually gone to different areas in town and tested. Perhaps they have upgraded some areas. None were I have been.

True, but it leaves a majority portion of their users in the cold. You would not believe the massive amount of port outs happening at sprint right now. I thought that 800smr would slow it, and the lte they have done so far, but it's like a steady stream of ports, and not just out to t-mo, vzw is taking just as many. I would not expect good news come q3 results.

What's slowing Sprint down? 1) backhaul, 2) consolidating equipment, 3) spectrum allocation.

Sprint had a dearth of T1 fed towers. They were late in the game to converting them to fiber and they're more reliant on third parties to provide it. Verizon and AT&T have large swaths of in-territory towers where they can run their own fiber. Plus remember Verizon made a pact w/ the cable companies - who are Verizon's go-to resource for fiber and coax to their cell towers where Verizon doesn't already have fiber nearby.

Sprint tower upgrades are complicated by the fact that they aren't just upgrading their existing base stations with a software or hardware upgrade, they're effectively changing out to a new platform altogether. They are moving to a whole new base station architecture (because what they had was not aging so gracefully) and the new architecture even applies to legacy service - i.e. 1XRTT and EVDO.

Lastly, in many markets, Sprint is having to refarm spectrum as they go. There's the 800/850Mhz from Nextel, 2.5Ghz from Clearwire/et al, and and existing 1.9Ghz PCS spectrum from their core holdings.

All those together mean Sprint has way more moving parts in their LTE upgrade than the other 3 carriers.

}Davoice

Well if you feel like waiting a few more months t-mobile should be rolling metro pcs' LTE, which is in your area, into the fold. They have already combined LTE in vegas.

On your note 2, you can dial *#BAND# and choose LTE Band Pref, then choose lte band 4, then wait around 20 seconds and see how many bars show on your signal indicator (It likely wont be able to connect but it will show the strength of metro's LTE). Remember to set the mode back to automatic afterwards (menu key, back, menu key, back)

Point taken, however most of those apply to T-mobile as well. T-mobile is replacing everything on every LTE tower and refarming their spectrum at the same time (new HSPA+ on 1900Mhz and new LTE on AWS, while shifting around existing GSM and HSPA+). They also don't have their own fiber networks to tap into. So While I understand that's slowing Sprint down, it still seems to be taking excessively long.

Sounds like you connect with EDGE/2.5G. T-Mobile sucks because a large part of their network is only GSM/EDGE, which connects at 200Kbps. In my case, it does this in all non-major cities and freeway areas, and I found my phone behaves like it doesn't even have internet in those areas. Like Google Maps, Google Play, email, NOTHING actually loads because EDGE is so slow and congested.. fuck.

Now in major city areas, I get 4G HSPA+ and LTE, upto 30Mbps down and 16Mbps up. They don't list it, but Springfield/Eugene OR also have LTE and have for months (but not full coverage; it's spotty, off and on here and there; otherwise it goes back to 4G HSPA+, which is fast, 10-15Mbps down / 6 Mbps up).

Weird because I haven't had speeds that bad the few times I've been in Victorville. It almost sounds like you're on Edge (220kbps being about the max).

I agree - I suspect that T-Mobile's HPSA+ had already backhauled, while Sprint's EVDO was still on T1 in many areas (could be wrong).
On a side note - didn't Sprint actually 'own' many of its cell sites (vs. colo or use American Tower/Crown Castle) ? This may be hurting them (i.e. Colo'd site = most likely fiber nearby or pulled to the site, while an 'owned' site = pull it in yourself or microwave.)

Hey back in the day art had this cutting edge technology called pocketnet. The device was black and white and you got always on internet at the then blazing fast 56k per second so getting 512 today is ten times faster

Confirming... No LTE in the Columbia, SC metro area.
I went around with an HTC one (T-Mobile variant)
And no.... it's not here.

Calling BS... it's probably turned up on one cell site someplace.

I'd say just get a prepaid hotspot/phone for the areas you're traveling through, but stay with carrier that's best for where you live. Same as if you're going to travel a foreign country.