T-Mobile has turned on its first 600MHz 4G LTE sites, two months after the operator got the licenses to operate the low-band spectrum it won at auction earlier this year.
The new deployment in Wyoming was announced in a typically boisterous tweet from T-Mobile US Inc. CTO Neville Ray:
Ray says that the operator worked with Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), as well as analog TV broadcasters, who were vacating the spectrum after the auction."We executed a 2-year process in just 6 months," the CTO boasted in another tweet.
T-Mobile spent nearly $8 billion to win 600MHz spectrum nationwide in April this year. The low-band spectrum is important for T-Mobile, which has mostly deployed on mid-band spectrum previously. The lower band has a longer range and better in-building penetration. (See T-Mobile, Dish & Comcast Big Winners in $19.8B 600MHz Auction.)
Ray expects Samsung to deliver 4G LTE devices that support 600MHz this "winter." The operator expects to launch 600MHz in parts of Kansas, Maine, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and other states later this year.
The 600MHz sites, however, won't just be important for 4G but also the operator's 5G push, which is expected to start in 2019. T-Mobile says it expects to deploy a nationwide 5G network and will begin deployment using the 600MHz band. (See T-Mobile on 5G: Starting With 600MHz, Looking at mmWave Future.)
— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading