Sprint's Big City 4G LTE Gets Closer

Sprint Nextel Inc. is gearing up to offer 4G LTE in more major cities in the U.S. Phone Area reports that Sprint has gone live with 21 new markets including Los Angeles. (See Sprint's 4G LTE Testing Tease.) The new cities include:

• California: Los Angeles, Contra Costa County
• Florida: Palm Bay, Port St. Lucie, West Palm Beach
• Indiana: Bloomington and Lafayette
• Illinois: Rochelle
• Minnesota: Mankato-North Mankato
• Missouri: Joplin
• North Carolina: Charlotte, Shelby, Albemarle, Sailsbury, Lincolnton
• Tennessee: Memphis, Greenville, Tullahoma
• Texas: Denison, Kerrville
• Virginia: Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News

Meanwhile, clouds of Sprint's LTE signal are showing up all over New York. Here's the 4G forecast from Sprint near Light Reading Mobile's office in Manhattan from crowd-sourced network finder Sensorly. Sprint said in January that it's working on New York 4G as part of a planned 28-market deployment. (See Sprint Teases 28 LTE Markets Coming 'Soon'.) Sprint is working to catch up on larger rivals with its 4G footprint. CEO Dan Hesse admitted in February that Sprint is trailing its LTE competitors. (See Sprint CEO: We're 'Behind' on Network Vision.) Sprint has 67 live 4G LTE markets now. It expects to cover 200 million people in the U.S. with LTE services by the end of 2013. — Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile