Sprint has officially launched its long awaited LTE network as part of its ongoing Network Vision initiative and has announced that its initial 5 city rollout has been “expanded” to 15 cities, although those additional “cities” form a part of the core launch markets previously announced and are more of an attempt by the carrier to juice the numbers and coverage level, rather than being an honest declaration of availability.
The previous 5 city availability now looks like this when broken down further by suburbs, with the only new additions being the cities of Waco, TX and Granbury in Hood County along with the addition of Kansas City, which officially rolled out on Friday:
- 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.
It should also be noted that Sprint’s initial LTE rollout will be constrained in terms of top speed, as the carrier is rolling out the new service on reallocated 1900MHz spectrum gained as a result of the increased efficiency of the Network Vision deployment on 5MHz carrier channels while it waits for Clearwire’s own LTE network to come online and the completion of the currently ongoing iDEN sunset, which will provide even more spectrum for LTE access when fully complete in 2013 along with its LTE rollout. Currently, Sprint features multiple devices with LTE support, such as the LG Viper, EVO 4G LTE, Galaxy Nexus and the Sierra Wireless Tri-Mode Hotspot with more launching this year.
