T-Mobile today announced that the company has begun deploying faster speeds -- via LTE-U technology -- in select cities nationwide. A company announcement indicates that LTE-U -- which uses publicly available 5 GHz airwaves to bolster existing LTE capacity and speeds -- has gone live in six markets: Bellevue, WA; Brooklyn, NY; Dearborn, MI; Las Vegas, NV; Richardson, TX; and Simi Valley, CA. The FCC approved the use of LTE-U devices in the 5 GHz band earlier this year after hammering out some early interference concerns.
Of course you'll need a compatible device to use these speeds, and the only compatible handset being offered right now is the Samsung Galaxy S8.
The company also announced that it had conducted the country's first mobile broadband data session live in the field using License Assisted Access (LAA) on T-Mobile's commercial network. The field testing, which began in Los Angeles this week, resulting in downstream speeds of 741 Mbps using 80 MHz of aggregated spectrum.
"LAA is the just the latest example of how T-Mobile is innovating the way forward. While our competitors scramble to deal with the way unlimited data plans are slowing down their networks, we’re already moving on to what’s next," said T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray. "This means that the fastest LTE network -- that’s T-Mobile -- will only get faster. I hope AT&T and Verizon like eating our dust!"
The company's
full announcement has a little more technical detail about T-Mobile's latest network improvements.