T-Mobile CEO Neville Ray said at CES this week that the carrier will first launch the new 4G upgrade in Las Vegas. TmoNews reports that the CTO said the launch will happen within "weeks."
T-Mobile has previously said that it expects to cover 100 million potential customers with fresh 4G by the middle of this year. And by the end of 2013, 200 million will be within the footprint.
Light Reading Mobile can help shed some light on what this new 4G upgrade is and where T-Mobile might take it:
Where will T-Mobile go next with LTE-Advanced?
If it follows its 3G upgrade path as it did will the latest 42Mbit/s update, the next markets to get LTE could include New York City, Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla.
Then -- given the operator's current spectrum footprint -- other top markets to follow could include Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Baltimore and Seattle.
Just what is LTE-Advanced?
LTE-Advanced is defined in release 10 of the LTE specification. The specification uses a few different techniques at the radio access network (RAN) and handset to boost the data speeds and spectrum efficiency of the broadband specification.
These include "carrier aggregation" techniques that bond together two or more separate radio channels to get faster data speeds; two-by-two smart antenna arrays (also known as 2x2 multiple input, multiple output (MIMO)) for faster uplink and downlink; and relay nodes -- low-power base stations that will provide improved coverage and capacity at the cell edge.
The upgrade calls for maximum download rates of 3 Gbit/s and uploads of 1.5 Gbit/s, but these targets won't translate to the real world. The 3GPP specification allows up to 100MHz of spectrum in bonded channels, and such an amount of bandwidth is a dream for carriers around the world. T-Mobile will have a maximum of 20MHz to play with, and not in every market.
It should be noted that LTE-Advanced and WiMax 2 were initially designed as the first initial 4G technologies to come on the market.
Here's a handy primer from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. on how LTE-Advanced should work in the real world:
For more
- Meet the Next 4G: LTE-Advanced
- Ready or Not, Here Comes LTE-Advanced
- Ready or Not, Here Comes LTE-Advanced
- Tracking T-Mobile's 4G Advance
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
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