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The crowd sourcing network specialists over at OpenSignal — a website that uses their own app to gather network data from users around the world — detected some interesting activity in their logs. Looks like T-Mobile has begun testing their upcoming 4G LTE network in a few new cities. The data was pulled from a few devices, namely, the Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S4 (what’s interesting is the S4 is showing a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 CPU, not the Exynos Octa). Here are the 6 new cities T-Mobile is currently testing their 4G LTE, adding to the list of 3 we’ve known about for awhile now (Kansas City, Las Vegas, and their HQ in Bellevue).
- Seattle
- Denver
- New Orleans
- New York
- San Diego
- San Jose /Bay Area
Real world download speeds are showing a respectable 25Mbps on average, with a upload of 8Mbps and ping of 40ms. Not too shabby, T-Mobile. Not too shabby at all. With T-Mobile’s new UNcarrier plans and blazing fast LTE, are any of you thinking about making the switch to Magenta in the coming months?
I get speeds higher than that with T-Mobile’s current HSPA+ network. Honestly, I was expecting LTE Advanced from there…
doubt it
i get 20 all day
13 Down 3 up all day long Philadelphia suburbs…….., honestly the connection is almost instant I really don’t know now much faster I would need, and I’m a speed freak ….lol
This is gonna ruin their network. Its like they can’t make up their minds what technology they want to use. They should have taken all the LTE money they’ve allocated and invested in wider and better hspa+42. They’re gonna spread their infrastructure so thin it’s gonna strangle them.
While I agree with that idea, I don’t think the American market was going to allow them to do that. It’s all about the L, T, and E to the general public, sooo… yeah.
Well hopefully they can make LTE reliable and figure out how to stop it from being such a battery whore. LTE is what made me ditch verizon once and for all. Never had service or hardware issues until LTE came along.
i disagree. The general public doesnt even know what lte is. In fact, people make fun of the verizon commercials because they have no idea what they are even talking about. I’m assuming LTE has some future cost or bandwidth benefits on the carrier end.
But I believe the general public IS actually learning. More and more of my friends, family, and coworkers seem to be figuring out what LTE is, whereas a year ago I couldn’t say that.
I think TMO may have seen the writing on the wall.
Im just saying i think you have to give t mobile a little more credit than them investing billions just so they can say “me too.” If it’s that easy to just say LTE is the best in a commercial then T-Mobile could have just as easily said Nah our 4g is just as fast and better on battery and saved a ton of money. I’m currently on t mobile so i appreciate the hspa+ and i did wonder why they didn’t continue to move forward with it. But there are potential advantages going forward with lte that many of us ate in aware of. Voice over LTE, perhaps in the future phones might only come in LTE only radios and tmobile would need custom models, LTE is cheaper to maintain, etc. there are a lot of variables that just be considered instead of just saying “oh they fell for the hype” that’s a cop out answer.
I believe there is some misunderstanding here. I wasn’t saying that Tmo was switching simply because they wanted to say” me too.” Although with any competitive business, that does play a part.
No, I meant that they did see that LTE was going to be the standard in the U.S., so they adapted. I was actually trying to give them credit, not bash them.
Ah i gotcha. Well apologies for my misunderstanding.
No sweat… it’s refreshing when there is an actual conversation, as opposed to just lobbing grade school insults back and forth.
But that can be fun too, sometimes.
:-P
not even close ..if i ask 10 people 9 wont know what lte stands for or hspa all they know is 4g is fast like wifi ..just like when every single iphone 4s user said hey ” i just downloaded 4g” when they got an update changing the 3g symbol on top to 4g lol as long a its fast people wont care and with my nexus on hspa everything is instant you would never in a million year be able to tell the difference between the 2
Ahh, knowing what LTE stands for? No. But knowing that it is widely accepted as being faster than HSPA+? Yes, *in my experience, relatively recently *, more people have become knowledgeable in this respect.
LMAO they MIGHT no what lte is but i guarantee you 1000000% no one everr even heard of hspa and u obv hhave never used hspa 42 because there’s no noticeable difference on my nexus 4 and my gfs ltevo
Some of the people I know do know what HSPA+ is.
But in general, most people do not, but they are learning about lte, do that goes to my point.
I do in fact have experience with HSPA+ 42… and it is faster than Sprints LTE. However, depending on what area one is in, either one of Vzw’s or At&t’s LTE is, in fact, much faster than HSPA+.
Having said that, I would also be more than happy with just HSPA+.
They could let their budget MVNOs use HSPA while TMo itself use LTE.
Come on Washington, DC and New York City……….
Nah I won’t be
Still waiting for this to get turned on in KC. Come on already!
How about Miami? Great test site since it is one of heavily populated areas in the south east.
I thought the confirmation was all but concrete stating that we *wouldn’t* get the Octa in the US S4, Chris. Your statement contradicts that (???).
Well, I was hoping the S4 would get the Snapdragon 600, not a regular S4.
Gotcha. I thought that sounded like something other than the 600.
The GS4 is hardly going to have an antiquated dual core processor. That’s not even the S4 Pro.
Thinking about it…Sprint is just crap and I’m tired of Verizon’s crap. And I live in SJ so I’m tempted.
SJ here as well. I would get T Mobile in a heart beat..Virgin Mobile EVO 4G will go bye bye. What part of San Jose?
West side. T-Mobile seems like the best option as far as outside of Verizon and looming for unlimited.
I don’t understand why everyone is still surprised about the snapdragon. LTE + Exynos isn’t being built. All the news coming out indicates that (Exynos + HSPA+) & (Snapdragon + LTE) are the two configs.
This isn’t news. What is so hard to understand about this?
I think everyone figured because the Note II had an Exynos processor and LTE that Samsung’s future phones would also.
To be fair T-Mobile should defiantly go after a mid-Western city next, such as Cleveland, Ohio!
Wait…. Ohio is still a state? I thought we gave it away a few year ago. Eh… Oh well
That would be defiant alright…
You’ve already got Drew Carey, don’t be greedy.
they should bring it to Hawaii next….
If they get it before sprint, then I may consider. I’m sick of sprints crappy network. Although I did connect to their lte in Columbus Indiana yesterday and I must say it was beautiful
I have never been this excited for any T mobile news ever…Seeing San Jose on the 6 city list is making me want to switch. Wait and see
whaaaat!!?? not Texas yet? oh well i guess i can check it out this summer on round 2 of the roll out. hmmm sametime as the motorola x phone.. :-)
yes new york
I have a classmate, i cant say his name, but he works for a certain company who upgrades networks. He said he helped upgrade Verizon’s 3g to LTE in southern california. In class yesterday, he said he finished the upgrade in two cell towers in the bay area for tmoblie that included adding fiber optic connections. He is currently working in San Diego, and working on another tmobile cell tower. He said the best thing about tmobile, is that it will have “hybrid” 4g. That is HSPA 4G and LTE 4G.
Your telling us nothing we didn’t already know
I was talking to your mother.
19 down, 3 up in Rochester MN. Probably wouldn’t even notice a discernable difference with their LTE. The best part? I’m paying $70 less per month than I was paying for Verizon!!!! I don’t regret UNcarrier-ing one bit. Ffffuuuu greedy red.
Here’s my list for this yr: Atl, Bos, Dal/FtW, Det, New York, Philly, DC, Vegas, Baltimore, Hou, KC, Ca-Bay Area, Ca-Central(Sac to Bakersfield), Ca- South(LA Long Beach SD), Fla- North Central & South(Pan handle N/A for now).
That’s from the MetroPCS merger, along with their own(& VZW) AWS spectrum. It only can get better from there. Not amazingly fast or epic like the big 2 but better than
Sprint @ this point. Just think they’ll cover prob 15-20 of the Top 30 markets. They’ll still be behind the others but who knows they could catch Sprint. We’ll just have to see. I may eventually dump VZW & T-Mo is prob where I’d land.
Is anybody in LV or KC getting LTE?
I’m in kc……. Not yet
Nope, not I either. I’m sitting down near the big main central shopping area of the city and nothing so far. Actually, had faster speeds out north this morning than I am here. :-/
I’ve got the perfect situation come Tuesday, I live in the suburbs of Kansas City and work downtown. I’ll get to test out the footprint as well as the speeds across the city! Tues will be a interesting day.
I couldn’t care less that t-mobile announced Denver as one of it’s LTE markets. I’m in Denver and I’m ready to leave T-Mobile. I left Cricket last August and went to T-Mobile looking for better service. Oh how wrong I was. I’m sorry, but for where I’m at T-Mobile is no better than Cricket. I know others will have different experiences but I’m voicing my experience. Where I live t-mobile has absolutely no internet speed. The gym I go to, different area of town, internet speed is at a crawl. I went into a t-mobile store and asked the guy what speed I should be getting. He told me at least 15-20 mbps. I then proceeded to show him my speeds on my phone. He then came up with a plethora of excuses and that speeds are different in different areas. I then told him about my experiences in 1/4 of the entire Denver metro area. He pulled in a manager and the manager said that downtown would have better speeds. So, I then opened up my speedtest.net app and showed him the dismal speed I got while downtown. I only know of one area of the entire Denver metro area that has a consistent fast connection speed for t-mobile. Sucks since it’s a cell phone and I’m on the move. Yes, areas are faster than Cricket’s 3G but the cell service is NO better and many areas for internet speeds are identical to Cricket. Hence why I’m leaving t-mobile. I don’t care that they are bringing LTE to Denver. They lost my business when they advertise their current speeds but cannot deliver and then have sales associates come up with lame BS excuses. The girl I was with had to pull me out of the store because I was border line screaming at the guy. In addition, I would compare my speeds to others with me that are on different services and their speeds are consistently faster and useable. When my speeds are so poor that I can’t even check facebook or email then there’s no reason to stay with the service. A swing and a miss t-mobile. Verizon here I come!!!!!!