“Ahead of schedule” has become a recurring theme here. As of today, 250 million Americans can experience America’s fastest nationwide 4G LTE network. No other network team in the nation can light up new network advancements so fast. We saw it with the initial roll out of our LTE network – we hit nationwide coverage months ahead of schedule. We saw it with the nationwide availability of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) just three months after initially launching in Seattle.
We’re now on track to cover 280 million people with 4G LTE by mid-2015, and, I’m telling you today, we expect to hit the 300 million mark by the end of 2015.
We’ll do this by lighting up our 700 MHz and 1900 MHz PCS spectrum with LTE, and by continuing to push LTE on our AWS spectrum. Over 40 markets, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are the first of what will soon be many to get LTE on our 1900 MHz PCS spectrum and the team has been making huge progress in preparing our network for our recently acquired low-band 700 MHz A-Block spectrum with our first sites already on air. This low-band spectrum will be a powerful boost to our ambitious network plans, substantially improving in-building 4G LTE coverage, as well as expanding coverage well beyond major population centers.
We’re also continuing to roll out T-Mobile Wideband LTE into areas from coast to coast. Connecticut (which includes Bridgeport, Danbury, Hartford, Fairfield, Meriden, Milford, New Britain, New Haven, Stamford and Waterbury) and the Greater Bay Area (which includes the counties of Alameda, Contra-Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma) are just two of the most recent regions to get a massive speed boost from a Wideband LTE upgrade. This brings the current number of markets with T-Mobile Wideband LTE to 19. And we’re aiming for at least 26 Wideband LTE markets by the end of this year alone.
At the end of the day, all this hard work is about delivering an even more amazing experience to our customers by advancing and expanding what is already America’s fastest nationwide 4G LTE network. Rolling out nationwide VoLTE coverage and next-gen Wi-Fi Calling as well as building out T-Mobile’s Wideband LTE are the most recent examples of my team’s complete commitment to advancing our Data Strong™ network.
The team here at T-Mobile continues to blow me away with their agility and dedication to creating the best experience in wireless. Year end is approaching but I have a feeling we’ll have more to talk about soon.