By Back at CES, T-Mobile announced that its very first 4G LTE city would go live. Las Vegas was the city to get that love, of course, considering that’s where the tech world converged for close to a week, but some recent evidence suggests Kansas may be next up to bat. An XDA member in Wichita was able to get his Band 4-compatible Galaxy Note (the original) up on an LTE network that seems to be in testing by T-Mobile. The speeds don’t look great — 10k kilobits down to 5k kilobits up, just about — but that’s not important here.
What’s important is that T-Mobile has reached a stage where it’s comfortable with lighting a signal up for the purposes of testing the many different variables of network technology, and that we’re getting closer and closer to an onslaught of launches for Magenta. By the time this thing goes live and some devices are released to actually take advantage of the network we should see those speeds increase ten-fold.
While T-Mobile might be behind the rest of the pack in terms of rollouts and device launches, the company is expected to be very aggressive and get a majority of its current 3G footprint covered by the end of 2013. T-Mobile will also look to have the first major LTE upgrades to make their network compliant with the standards set in the 3GPP Release 10 document. We’ll have to wait and see just how much of an improvement that turns out to be over current Release 9-compliant deployments.
Unfortunately there’s still a lot of work to be done so we can’t say when, exactly, T-Mobile expects a full-on launch. Devices should be rolling in starting at some point in Q2, though, with a full suite of products ready to chow down on LTE goodness starting in the second half of this year.
[XDA Developers via TmoNews]
Grr!! Making me do the math. >=.[
10458 KiloBITS per second
= 1307.25 KiloBYTES per second
= 1.3 MegaBYTES per second.
Sorry, but there are still some people that don’t know the difference between “MB” and “Mb”.
I can’t wait to see this. Doesn’t the Galaxy S3 have dormant LTE radios? Wait!! Will it be allowed to access the network? Wasn’t it thought that Google was patching up the Nexus 4 radios so that it can’t connect to LTE since it wasn’t registered with the FCC?
Whoops, seems I read the unit wrong. Didn’t realize it was kilobits (though I was seeing megabits for some reason).
LoL!! I hate it when I do that too.
Galaxy s3 is not equipped with dormant LTE radios, tmobile did mention a special edition S3 with LTE radios later this year…i think i read sometime in may/june
Ah!! That’s probably what I was thinking about. Cool!!
No LTE radios on your gs 3
There is no need to do the math especially considering your math is off. 10458kbps on a speedtest is pretty much just 10mbps when you convert it.
Please tell me where my math was wrong? 1.3 Megabytes equal 10.4 Megabits.
https://www.google.com/search?q=1.3+megabytes+%3D+megabits&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS440US440&oq=1.3+megabytes+%3D+megabits&aqs=chrome.0.57j0.5848&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
That would be terrible if Google did that with the nexus 4.
But, launching lte in the markets where metro PCS already has launched LTE should be easy for tmo no? They can light up almost 11 or 12 markets right away if they upgrade it a bit.
I’ve seen double those speeds on my friends tmobile gs2 here in Houston. How can you tell this is lte?
Galaxy s 2 is not a lte capable device. Hspa 42.
It is LTE still being worked on. By the time it is full ready for launch, you will speeds 40x that potentially.
Ahh the irony. I’m already getting 12mpbs down near the Boston area on HSPA+ 42. If 3G polling wasn’t so terrible with the Nexus 4, I might tell them to hold off on their LTE networks altogether.
My contract ends with Verizon ends in December. What great news.
I’m getting better than half that speed with a GNex (+21) inside my home. I don’t know if it’s universal, but here in western San Francisco TMo service drops off precipitously the moment one walks into a building. So I’m in no hurry at all to upgrade, except maybe to a +42 N4 later this year. No speed, no feature, no nothing is worth losing that Nexus badge.
Sooo the LTE speed in kansas is only 1.3 mb? when i was on tmo i was getting 2.1 mb/s on hspa+ in pittsburgh….
That’s not what ist’s gonna be when the LTE network is ready for use. Those are just preliminary testing and set up of the network.
Thats 10.4 mb and as TBN27 says, they’re just testing now.
I blame marketing hype for the whole reason magenta thinks that they need an LTE network in the first place. I mean, some people are getting 30mbs which is double my cable internet!
People will be expecting VoLTE soon, so all major carriers having it is kind of important. Not to mention it should eventually allow for future phones to be interchangeable with all carriers so long as they are made to support the bands of them, which is quickly becoming the case. Tmobile would be pretty well cut off if they just stuck with HSPA+ on a different spectrum from everyone else. Instead they are investing to stay relevant. I do wish they could have upgraded their entire coverage area to hspa+ before moving to LTE though. They only have 3g in my area, and 2g in all of VT. It’s kind of sad.
This makes sense.
WOW,right in SPRINTS’ backyard……OUCH……….
my hspa42 is fine
Wichita has a large t-mobile call center.
I see speeds on my n4 that range from around 15Mbps-20Mbps in NYC on HSPA+… Very happy with my $70 prepaid plan that gives me unlimited calls, text, and data on T-mo
Anybody in Connecticut, please post location & speedtest!
Unless I am wrong the Speed Test App measures in kbps,Mbps, and kB/s. 10458kbps should measure out to about 10.46 Megabits. The Speed Test Apps does not not measure in Megabytes. If i am wrong about this let me know.
EDIT: Bwahahahaaa!! I just comprehended your statement. You’re saying “Megabytes” isn’t an option under tools. I don’t see it. There.