Sprint Promises 60Mbps LTE

How does 60Mbps LTE sound? I don’t know about you, but if a carrier can live up to that promise, I’d definitely be switching without a second thought! That’s what Sprint is promising: a whopping 60Mbps LTE connection called “Sprint Spark”.

While everyone was probably caught up in Halloween preparations last week, Sprint made the announcement about Sprint Spark. They even made a live demonstration of their super-high-speed capabilities, which, rather understandably, is only available in select cities for now:New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa and Miami.What about the rest of the country? Sprint’s plans for their 60Mbps LTE include a rollout in about 100 American cities in the next three years.

From the Sprint announcement:

Sprint Spark is a combination of advanced capabilities, like 1x, 2x and 3x carrier aggregation for speed, 8T8R for coverage, MIMO for capacity, TDD for spectral efficiency, together with the most advanced devices offering both tri-band capability and high-definition voice for the best possible customer experience.

Tech gobbledygook aside, what is important is the 50-60 Megabits per second capability of the new technology. It is nothing short of amazing, especially if your carrier’s LTE practically stands for “long term Edge”, as mine seems to be.

We do have to be practical about it, though, as we know just what congestion can do to Internet speeds. Still, it is not uncommon for telcos to continue taking on as many subscribers as they can, and with these very high speed capacities, Sprint may just have gotten more leeway.

Another important thing to take note of: not all mobile phone are going to be able to take advantage of the new technology. Sprint has said that tri-band smartphones compatible with Sprint Spark will be available in the next few weeks. These include HTC One Max, LG G2, Samsung Galaxy Mega™ and Samsung Galaxy S® 4 mini.

Can you imagine having that much speed on your phone? One word: heaven.

[Image via theverge]