T-Mobile USA is rolling out its new no-contract pricing just as the latest tests of its LTE network are showing speeds that could be the fastest in the country. Tests show download speeds of up to 25 megabits per second.
The nation’s fourth-largest carrier, which is on track to merge with MetroPCS, has three new plans: 500 MB of high-speed data for $50/month (with speeds throttling back to 2G speeds after 500 MB), 2.5 GB for $60/month with throtting, and unlimited 4G data (wherever T-Mobile USA’s network offers 4G) for $70/month. All three plans include smartphone mobile hotspot service. The carrier has adjusted its device pricing to reflect the new service offerings, and is also encouraging users to bring their own devices to its network.
LTE service is expected to be the subject of a T-Mobile USA press conference scheduled for tomorrow. T-Mobile USA is reportedly testing LTE in the the San Francisco Bay Area (Silicon Valley), Seattle, Denver, Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York, San Diego, and Kansas City. That report comes from OpenSignal, which gathers its data from users of its Android app. OpenSignal also tracks data speeds, and last week it said that its preliminary data shows T-Mobile USA’s LTE network delivering download speeds of up to 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of 8 megabits per second.
OpenSignal has reported average download speeds of 13 Mbps for AT&T, 10 Mbps for Verizon Wireless, and 7.7 Mbps for Sprint Nextel.
Those speeds are slower than speeds reported earlier this month by Root Metrics, which gathered 725,000 data samples from 77 markets in the second half of 2012. The firm said that Verizon Wireless’ LTE network provided average download speeds of 14.3 Mbps and average upload speeds of 8.5 Mbps. AT&T provided average download speeds of 18.6 Mbps and average upload speeds of 9 Mbps. Root Metrics did not measure T-Mobile USA’s LTE network since it was not active. However, it did note that T-Mobile USA’s HSPA+42 network offered by far the fastest download speeds of any non-LTE network.
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