T-Mobile promises to upgrade all existing 2G coverage to LTE by 2015
In one of T-Mobile’s biggest announcements yet, the carrier has promised to upgrade all of its existing 2G coverage (GPRS and EDGE) to LTE by mid-2015. Additionally, it plans to begin utilizing its 700MHz A-block spectrum early next year, which it recently obtained from Verizon. (By the way, T-Mobile has also initiated legal action against Verizon for deceptive advertising, claiming that Verizon’s recent television commercials do not accurately portray T-Mobile’s 4G coverage.)
This announcement comes as T-Mobile nears the one year anniversary of its fledgling LTE network, which went from 0 to 210 million POPs in less than a year. Currently reaching 273 metro areas, T-Mobile hopes to cover 230 million people with LTE by the end of this year, and 250 million by mid-2015, effectively reaching 96% of the US population with LTE and converting its existing 2G footprint over to LTE.
This is certainly big new, but I approach this with a healthy dose of skepticism – living through all of Sprint’s broken promises will do that to you. However, given T-Mobile’s track record the past year, this certainly seems like something that the carrier is capable of doing, especially when you consider that it only needs to cover an additional 40 million POPs in one year to get there.
This addresses one of the last remaining pain points of many T-Mobile customers, which is that coverage outside of cities stinks. I’m excited to see how things will shape up around central Illinois, and will keep my eye on T-Mobile’s process throughout the next year.
[TMoNews]
