Sprint's LTE is here, and this time it's official

[Brendan Hugo]

We've been getting scattered reports for some time now about Sprint's work on its LTE network. We've even seen the launch of several LTE devices, but before this weekend, there had been no “Grand Opening!” announcement. Well, as of today Sprint officially has six markets up and running, with a grand total of 15 cities. Those cities are:

• Athens, GA
• Atlanta, GA
• Calhoun, GA
• Carrollton, GA
• Newnan, GA
• Rome, GA

• Kansas City, KA/MO
• St. Joseph, MO

• Dallas,TX
• Fort Worth, TX
• Granbury-Hood County, TX
• Houston,TX
• Huntsville, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Waco, TX

“Sprint and our vendors have been deploying Network Vision sites all across the country for the last several months and we are thrilled to deliver our new network to our customers today in and around Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio and Waco,” said Bob Azzi, Senior Vice President-Network, Sprint. “This new network is performing extremely well and customers should find it consistent, reliable and really fast.”

Sprint is promising an expansion in the second half of this year, and that it will be done by the end of 2013. 2013 is also when Sprint plans to start upgrading to the faster LET-Advanced specification. This brings me to the only let-down of this news: Sprint's LTE network is only half as fast—give or take a bit—than AT&T, and even farther behind Verizon's solid LTE speeds. Reportedly, Sprint LTE customers can expect download speeds of six to eight Mbps. That is not exactly the theoretical 50Mbps that the LTE specification can handle, but it's a whole heck of a lot better than 3G—no doubt there.

Anybody here already have a Sprint LTE device in one of the new markets? What kind of real-world speeds are you seeing? Anybody else upgrading—this week perhaps? After all, Sprint is the only non-throttled unlimited 4G LTE option now—a fact very little dimmed by single-digit speeds.

[Sprint via Android Police]

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