Sprint 4G LTE service goes hot in 15 cities in southern United States
Sprint announced today it has flipped the switch on 4G LTE coverage in 15 cities in the Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas markets.
Running on the 1900 MHz spectrum, Sprint's LTE will not be as fast as competing networks of Verizon running on the 700 MHz Band 13 frequency or AT&T running at 700 MHz band 17 and 2100/1700 MHz band 4 frequencies. Also Sprint's service is limited by the backhauls to its towers, as well as limited to using only two 5 MHz bands for uplink and downlink. This will only allow speeds of 2Mbps to 3 Mbps on Sprint's current LTE network, far less than AT&T or Verizon.
Unfortunately Sprint's LTE will also not be able to penetrate into large buildings due to the higher frequency of their LTE network, similar to how a low-frequency bass sound from a speaker will penetrate a building more than the higher frequency treble noise.
But Sprint's LTE service is the only one that does not have restrictive data caps. The lure of unlimited data can only last so long unless the carrier is quick to jump on a faster backhaul and gets access to use open access 700 MHz spectrum.
The 15 cities:
- Atlanta
- Athens, Ga.
- Calhoun, Ga.
- Carrollton, Ga.
- Newnan, Ga.
- Rome, Ga.
- Dallas
- Fort Worth, Texas
- Granbury-Hood County, Texas
- Houston
- Huntsville, Texas
- San Antonio, Texas
- Waco, Texas
- Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.
- St. Joseph, Mo.
Sprint sugests visiting its coverage map for more details on new deployments.