A Peek Inside T-Mobile's Massive LTE Growth

T-Mobile's tight second-place finish in our 2022 Fastest Mobile Networks test caps several years of incredible network growth for the No. iii The states carrier.

For the past seven years, we've been driving around the US testing 3G and 4G wireless networks, collecting speed data and tracking coverage during our drives. Nosotros can only test the areas our drivers comprehend, but that however gives united states a decent picture show of how the networks are growing.

And T-Mobile has grown a lot.

"We've been looking to match the national footprint of a Verizon, who have been No. 1 on overall coverage in the US, and we're pretty much there at present. That's been a big function of our journey," Neville Ray, T-Mobile's CTO, told PCMag.

The company provided u.s. with maps showing what it says are four years of growth for its LTE coverage, based on data from the stop of each year. Nosotros assembled them into a GIF:

T-Mobile Network Growth

We likewise added maps from our own drive tests in May of each yr, which nosotros've never revealed before. Cerise is 2G, yellow is 3G, and light-green is 4G LTE.

Fastest Mobile Networks T-Mobile Growth

T-Mobile's LTE coverage was pretty bad in 2022. As you lot can see in our bulldoze-test map, it mainly covered but city centers on the E Coast. In 2022, parts of the Central Us started to fill in, but you couldn't really call it a nationwide network.

The large change happened betwixt mid-2015 and mid-2016 when T-Mobile started building its "extended range" 700MHz network. Yes, there were however noticable gaps in T-Mobile'south network; W Virginia and rural Pennsylvania had very little T-Mobile coverage at all. That'due south backed up on T-Mobile's official maps, only by and large, there's more green than red on our map, and more pink than blackness on T-Mobile's.

"That'south primarily 700MHz," Ray said. "We were hugely excited to get our hands on the 700MHz and nosotros moved at breathtaking speed to deploy it. You can see the fruit of the labor later two, two and a half years of work on rapid deployment. A lot of that rural footprint for us was either roaming or 2G, and in some cases we didn't even have footprint [before the 700MHz rollout]," he said.

Now accept a expect at 2022. T-Mobile is truly a nationwide 4G network. The final big gaps we ran into were in Wyoming and southern Arizona. The visitor says it'southward filling in the Arizona gap, and Wyoming doesn't take very many people in it.

"Our goal set for 2022, what nosotros're targeting, is to become north of 320 1000000 [people covered]," Ray said. "At that place'southward textile geographic expansion there."

It'south tough to shake off a bad reputation. T-Mobile was kneecapped past the failed AT&T merger bid in 2022, which left it a few years behind Verizon and AT&T in setting up a nationwide LTE network.

Merely our studies prove that you don't need to worry well-nigh that any more, unless you're in Wyoming or a few other rural areas. T-Mobile'southward coverage volition expand further in the W as it lays down a rural and suburban network on its new 600MHz spectrum over the side by side two years.

"Nosotros've got well-nigh 270 million [people covered] on our 700MHz network. We own licenses for about 272. When we finish that story, nosotros're picking upwards straightaway on the 600MHz story," Ray said. "We've got radio coming in the third quarter we nosotros can start standing up test clusters, and deployment moves into total-diameter mode for u.s.a. in Q4."

Warning: Merge Ahead?

There's one warning I see in this history, though. Every bit I said, T-Mobile'south network was hobbled in role by the drama around its failed merger with AT&T, and revitalized in part thanks to the massive breakdown fee AT&T paid the visitor when the merger didn't pan out.

At present rumors are rising again of Sprint and T-Mobile potentially merging. Huge mergers similar this aren't just bad for competition and prices. They directly a company'southward energy in for years, as information technology struggles with merging workforces, eliminating indistinguishable stores, and combining prison cell sites. That generally makes service improvement grind to a halt in favor of increasing profit through efficiency. We saw this with Dart and Nextel, and we saw it with AT&T and Cingular.

T-Mobile's washed an amazing job of building its network in the past few years. With 5G coming up but two years from now, it tin can't beget to vanish into a navel-gazing, merger-related rabbit hole. Hopefully, it'll stay independent and exist as competitive in 5G as information technology has get in 4G LTE.