Sprint has proceeded to debuting its LTE Plus network across the New York metropolis, while boasting that it has boosted the speed and capacity two fold of over 900 2.5 GigaHertz cellular sites within the metropolitan area since the start of 2016. For those not in the know, the wireless carrier’s LTE Plus service merges transmission in a trio of spectrum bands, namely the 2.5 GigaHertz, 1.9 GigaHertz, and 800 MegaHertz bands. LTE Plus is fully capable of producing connection speeds of more than 100 mbps on supporting handsets.
In January early this year, Sprint had claimed that its LTE Plus service was already made available in 150 locations across the United States. Three months later, the fourth biggest wireless carrier in America is now saying that it has since expanded the coverage of its LTE Plus network to over 190 markets throughout the country.
As explained by John Saw, the chief technical officer of Sprint, having deep 2.5 GigaHertz holdings allows the wireless carrier to have more capacity than any other mobile service provider in the US. With this capability, Sprint has placed itself in a good position to deliver expansive network capacity and fast connection speed to meet the demands of high data consumers such as mobile users based in the Big Apple.
While its rivals are looking to develop and prepare their 5G network offerings, Sprint has been busy fortifying its spectrum holdings by way of LTE. A few days ago, Jay Bluhm, the vice president of network planning at Sprint, had stated that the wireless carrier was taking a “wait and see” approach to 5G, explaining that while 5G is good, there is still a lot of stuff in 4G and LTE Advanced to be taken advantage of.
Bluhm also took the opportunity to note that the volume of Sprint’s network traffic has ballooned 85 percent year over year, and should grow to three times its current size by the end of this decade. The wireless carrier is making full use of its LTE Advanced optimization technologies (e.g. beamforming, carrier aggregation) in order to meet the ever increasing demand for data.
With regards to Sprint’s financial struggles, while it is true that its spectrum holdings are considered formidable (estimated to be worth over $115 billion), the wireless carrier still owes more than $10 billion due by 2020, with Sprint set to complete $2.3 billion in debt payments in 2016. Sprint has recently stated its intention of raising around $2.2 billion by selling some of its cellular tower equipment to a new entity, and then leasing the equipment back under an arrangement patterned loosely after its own device leasing model.
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