Sprint turned on its LTE service in 70 new markets across the U.S., including Cedar Rapids, Fargo, Kalamazoo, Little Rock, Louisville, Madison, Orlando, San Diego, St. Louis and others.
Sprint is now delivering LTE in 300 markets across the country.
“In 2013, we made major improvements across our 3G and 4G LTE network,” said Bob Azzi, chief network officer. “In the growing number of markets where the upgrades are nearly complete, our customers are noticing. Re-engineering our entire network has been a big undertaking, but now it’s delivering tangible benefits to our customers. With the announcement of Sprint Spark, the increasing availability of 4G LTE and the improvements we have made to our voice network, we’re full speed ahead for 2014.”
Some Sprint highlights for 2013:
- Announcement of Sprint Spark, which will use carrier aggregation and other techniques to boost performance of the LTE network.
- The Softbank transaction, which brings new financial resources to the company.
- The Clearwire acquisition, which makes Sprint Spark possible by providing access to contiguous 2.5GHz spectrum.
- The acquisition of spectrum from U.S. Cellular, which significantly increases network capacity in key Midwest markets.
- The introduction of HD Voice and a target of covering 85 million POPs by the end of 2013.
- The deployment of in-building systems at key stadiums, airports, concert venues, etc.
- The transition of iDEN business and government customers to Sprint’s 3G CDMA network.
