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T-Mobile rolls out LTE-U support in six cities

T-Mobile rolls out LTE-U support in six cities

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T-Mobile announced earlier this year that it would begin supporting LTE-U sometime this spring, and today the company announced that it’s making good on its word, as it starts rolling out support for the new wireless standard in six cities.

If you live in Bellevue, WA; Brooklyn, NY; Dearborn, MI; Las Vegas, NV; Richardson, TX; or Simi Valley, CA and have a compatible device — which for now, is only the Samsung Galaxy S8 — you’ll be able to take advantage of the faster speeds through LTE-U.

If you need a refresher, LTE-U, or LTE-Unlicensed, is part of the LTE Advanced standard, which takes advantage of unused frequency from the 5 GHz band of spectrum (typically used by Wi-Fi routers) for faster LTE service.

In addition to the LTE-U rollout, T-Mobile also announced that it has successfully tested License Assisted Access — a next generation version of LTE-U that also utilizes the 5GHz band — in field tests for download speeds of up to 741 Mbps, although that technology is still far away from commercial deployments.