T-Mobile Expands Gigabit LTE Push to 430 Markets

T-Mobile today teamed up with Qualcomm to testify off the potential of its super-fast gigabit LTE network.

T-Mobile's next-generation LTE Avant-garde, which has been in the works for several years, has now expanded to more than 920 markets, the carrier announced at an event in San Jose. In 430 of those markets, T-Mobile customers with supported devices could potentially get Gigabit Class LTE download speeds.

Together with Qualcomm, T-Mobile demoed LTE advances using a Samsung Galaxy S8, which phone runs Qualcomm's gigabit LTE modem; it reached peak download speeds of around 670 Mbps.

In another demo, T-Mobile had five Google Fantasize virtual reality headsets continued to phones running over its gigabit LTE network. Each streamed 3D clips of NBA games at 4K and there was no slowdown at all.

Gigabit LTE Phones

T-Mobile customers in the 430 gigabit markets (here'southward the full list) could experience similar download speeds, though network atmospheric condition will vary. So, not exactly 1Gbps, but nonetheless a sizeable leap over many existing download speeds; customers could download a Netflix film or share photos online in simply seconds.

It's also not 5G, which T-Mobile expects to outset arriving in 2022.

As PCMag'southward Sascha Segan explained earlier this yr, Gigabit LTE requires a agglomeration of technologies that have to exist turned on both by the handset manufacturer and the wireless carrier. In the United states, a phone needs to support at least three-aqueduct carrier aggregation, which bonds together unlike slices of spectrum to make one broad highway. Information technology needs four-co-operative antenna diversity and four concrete antennas laid into the telephone to support 4x4 MIMO, which boosts the capacity of a connection. And it needs 256QAM down and 64QAM up, advanced forms of encoding that can pack more bits into a radio pulse.

So far, 10 Android smartphones—including the Galaxy S8, Note 8, Moto Z2 Force Edition, and LG V30—have modems that tin use the gigabit LTE. Just Qualcomm expects more vendors to build the technology into their upcoming devices.