Sprint Will Have 4G LTE Ahead Of Schedule, Phones Coming After The Fact

With news today of AT&T rolling out 4G LTE to 11 new markets, it seems Sprint is taking the opportunity to let people know that they plan on launching the incredibly fast service to 10 markets by the first half of this year. They originally said midsummer, though it’s looking like the carrier is pushing to get it done much faster.

Currently, Sprint has 4G thanks to a technology called WiMax which is from the company ClearWire, a wireless broadband provider. While the technology does well, it simply doesn’t stack up to the speed, efficiency, and improvement of 4G LTE, something that 2 of the biggest carriers in the USA, Verizon and AT&T, have had for quite some time.

Even with the news of it rolling out ahead of schedule (or so they say), phones that support 4G LTE won’t be available on Sprint until after the service has already rolled out. If they’re not careful and/or roll out the service too early, there could be a period of time where people could use it, but they don’t have any supported phones yet.

“Sprint plans to finish building its own 4G LTE network by 2013. In the meantime, the company said it would continue to support WiMax devices through this year. Clearwire is working to switch over to its own version of LTE as well.”

“Hesse (Sprint CEO) said that by 2014, he hopes to get Federal Communications Commission approval to use some of its current stock of spectrum for the LTE network, and is looking to increase capacity in the next two years.”