Sprint LTE-A deployment part of $45 million investment
Sprint is set to add LTE-Advanced technology and more than 300 jobs by the end of next year as part of a $45 million network investment project in Chicago. The program, dubbed Sprint for Chicago, was announced by the telecom operator and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
As part of the project, Sprint said Chicago will be the first market to see an upgrade of its current LTE network technology to LTE-A, designed to provide higher network speeds through advances in the LTE standard. The overall system upgrade will include new cell sites covering neighborhoods throughout the city, as well as along the Chicago Transit Authority subway routes.
Sprint said it has also created a working team focused on the city that will look to improve customer service, simplify the purchasing experience, provide network enhancements and further support community organizations and sponsorship opportunities in the area. Including the suburbs, Sprint said it will add more than 540 jobs in retail, customer service, network and corporate.
Sprint earlier this year scored $2.1 billion in financing tied to the broader deployment of LTE services using its extensive 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings. Sprint at the time said the project was focused on markets with exceedingly high “usage and capacity demands.” This would be part of the carrier’s previous plans to provide a “Tokyo-like” mobile broadband experience in densely populated markets by tapping into the experience of parent company Softbank.
Chicago has been at the core of recent Sprint network initiatives, including an analyst tour last year of its enhanced cell sites tied to its Network Vision and Spark programs.
The investment news comes on the heels of a reported outage last week of Sprint services across portions of the Midwest that impacted many major metropolitan areas including Indianapolis, Chicago and Cincinnati. The outage lasted nearly four hours, though Sprint noted it did not impact its LTE service.
Sprint noted earlier this year that it was part of a consortium that agreed to spend $32.5 million to install a distributed antenna system in Chicago’s subway. Carriers involved in the deal also included Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile US.
RootMetrics recently reported that Chicago was home to the nation’s best overall cellular service levels, scoring No. 1 in overall data quality, No. 2 in reliability and No. 3 in measured network data speeds.
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