Sprint today announced that Baltimore and Kansas City have been added to its list of markets expected to receive 4G LTE and upgraded 3G service by mid-2012.
Sprint recently announced that 4G LTE and enhanced 3G service are also expected by mid-2012 in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Sprint 4G LTE will enable faster speeds for data applications, and the enhanced 3G service promises better signal strength, faster data speeds, expanded coverage, and better in-building performance.
The effort is part of Sprint's "Network Vision" strategy to deploy multimode base stations across Sprint's U.S. cell sites to boost voice quality, signal density, and data speeds. The first multimode base station was deployed in Branchburg, N.J. in December.
In October, Sprint pledged to launch 15 dual band CDMA/LTE mobile devices, including handsets, tablets, and mobile hotspots, after its 4G LTE rollout. The initial devices already announced to run on 4G LTE are the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, LG Viper 4G LTE, and the Sierra Wireless Tri-Network Hotspot, a 3G, WiMAX, and 4G LTE mobile hotspot.
Sprint's switch to LTE pretty much signals the end of WiMAX, which is the first 4G technology in America launched by Sprint and Clearwire in 2008. According to Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale, Sprint will "continue selling WiMAX devices throughout 2012."
Sprint said that by the by end of 2012, it will have 120 million LTE POPs and 120 million WiMAX POPS; by the end of 2013 it will have 250 million LTE POPs versus 120 million on WiMAX.
This is in comparison to 4G LTE from Verizon Wireless, which is currently available in 194 cities and covers more than 200 million Americans, and AT&T's newly emerging LTE network, which is currently available in 26 cities and covers 74 million Americans.
For more phone news, check out PCMag's Cell Phones Product Guide and our guide to the fastest mobile networks of 2011.