Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio will be the first major markets to experience Sprint’s new super-fast 4G network.
The carrier has just announced those four cities as the launching pad for its burgeoning push to the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard.
The first Sprint LTE cluster was activated in Kanakakee, Illinois, a largely unpopulated town about 60 miles from Chicago.
Though it’s not widespread, it does show that Sprint is on schedule to deliver LTE-powered products by the middle of 2012, and today’s announcement is even further confirmation of that.
Sprint was the first to the 4G game when it launched its Wimax network a couple years ago. It was a huge improvement over the existing 3G infrastructures, but over time it became less relevant.
Sprint’s ‘4G’ network was rendered almost obsolete when Verizon stepped in as the first player in the LTE market. So although Verizon was the last one to launch a 4G campaign, because it waited it was able to leapfrog ahead everyone else and offer the fastest network available.
Now, the competitors are playing catch-up. AT&T is also working on rolling out an LTE network, and is slightly ahead of Sprint.
Sprint says it will have its LTE rollout finished throughout the US by the end of 2013.
