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Sprint’s 4G LTE network gets benchmarked; it’s fast, but what about coverage?

Categories: Sprint
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 1:24 AM
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Sprint, for reasons we still don’t understand, decided to launch a WiMAX network several years ago instead of waiting for the 4G LTE standard to become finalized. That decision has been incredibly painful for them. WiMAX smartphones were huge, delivered terrible battery life, and to top it all off, the WiMAX network wasn’t even that fast when compared to what HSPA+ technology could provide. Anyway, the company is now changing gears and will switch to 4G LTE this summer. The folks at PC Magazine have run some initial benchmarks on a test network in Atlanta, Georgia and here’s what they have to say:

“Sprint’s LTE network is faster than its old WiMAX network. It’s a bit faster than T-Mobile’s HSPA+ 21, and it’s about 25 times as fast as Sprint’s 3G network. But it doesn’t quite match AT&T’s and Verizon’s LTE speeds in cities where they have more spectrum.”

Got it? Good. The bigger question is of course coverage. Sprint doesn’t expect to fully deploy their new high speed network until 2014. Six cities will go live during the next few months, which means the majority of Sprint’s customers will be left twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their downloads to finish, and waiting for Sprint to issue a press release saying their town can now access a decent network. For an operator that’s not doing so good, this deployment schedule needs to be accelerated or else they risk becoming irrelevant.

So who has the fastest 4G LTE network? Surprisingly it’s AT&T, though to be fair Verizon has had their equivalent network fully operational for over half a year longer. At the end of the day though, PC Magazine makes a point we should all consider:

“Sprint’s peak download speeds hit 26.5Mbps down, which is as much bandwidth as anyone really needs.”

Seriously folks, what are you going to do with a pipe that fat?

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Shirondale Kelley

    I’d be happy with 3 Mbps dl speeds. I’ll be on T-Mobile soon enough.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/BEMBOSVQUHUDDCYMUF3EG32OEU C

    sprint is a joke.

    • http://profile.yahoo.com/Y7Q532MDH3YZ7C5XK2BDT7G6UE Katharine

      My ?eighbo?’s m?ther-i?-l?w Ma?es $8O hou?ly on the lapto?. She has b??n out of w0r? for 7 ?onths but l?st ?onth her i?come w?s $8734 just wor?i?g on th? la?t0? for a ƒew hours. G? to this web si?e and ?ead mor?.. Ca&#115hLazy.com

  • http://yrihf.com John Bailo

    LTE is garbage.

    Clear’s WImax network has served me excellently for 5 years and now I can use it with my Virgin Mobile HTC EVO 4G phone (it uses the Clear Wimax network for 4G).

  • Red777

    “for reasons that we still don’t understand” — hmm, how about that it had mandatory build requirements for the BRS frequencies that it would otherwise lose…