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Earlier today T-Mobile released the following blogpost indicating that they’ve increased 4G coverage in major metro areas across the country. Ray Neville, Chief Technology Officer for T-Mobile USA said the following “Continuing our fast-paced work to strengthen our already competitive 4G experience in major metro areas across the country, we’ve just announced technology advancements in three additional major metro areas, including Atlanta, Seattle and Minneapolis. Additionally, we have continued to expand on enhancements made last month in Oakland, San Francisco and the Silicon Valley to cover more surrounding cities.

We have now enhanced the network in 18 major metro areas, with the announcement of a dozen new metro areas just last month. T-Mobile expects to cover 100 million people with an enhanced network experience by the end of this year.

With these upgrades, customers who live in or are planning holiday visits to Atlanta, Seattle and Minneapolis, will now benefit from voice and data enhancements, improved signal strength and in-building coverage. Customers in these metro areas can also bring their unlocked AT&T smartphones to T-Mobile, and experience a significant speed boost on our network, while also saving up to $50/month compared to AT&T*.

Additionally, Unlimited 4G data from T-Mobile lets customers use their smartphones without the stress or worry of what their bills will look like.

T-Mobile customers will now experience improvements in areas including:

• Atlanta, including the surrounding cities of: Roswell, Alpharetta, Marietta, Covington and Conyers
• Seattle, including the surrounding areas of: Lynwood, Bothell, Mill Creek, Edmonds, Redmond, Kirkland, Woodinville, Bellevue, Issaquah, Sammamish, Kenmore, Mercer Island, North Bend, SeaTac, Burien, Tukwila, Renton, and Lake Stevens
• Minneapolis, including the nearby cities of: St. Paul and St. Cloud
• Additional Bay Area cites include: Fairfield, Monterey, Napa, Petaluma, Salinas, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and Vallejo.

T-Mobile network advancements also continue in additional areas including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, the New York metro area, Philadelphia, and San Diego. Customers in parts of these metro areas are already experiencing improved coverage and unlocked iPhone “speed sightings” on T-Mobile’s 4G network.”

Yesterday T-Mobile released a press release regarding investment growth and adjusted their dividend rate to 50 euro cents. The news release is common, however, one sentence in this release indicates T-Mobile will finally be offering the iPhone in 2013. Within the release you’ll notice the following “In addition, T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together in 2013.”

This could mark a turning point for T-Mobile who has been one of the few carriers left out of the iPhone action since the phone debuted many years ago. To help prep for the iPhone T-Mobile has been busy re-farming their HSPA+ network to work on existing 1900Mhz bands making any AT&T branded iPhone also compatible with T-Mobile's data networks. The only downside for customers is the phone will be unsubsidized meaning customers will pay full price, or choose from an installment plan ranging from $15 to $20 per month until the phone is paid for.

Yesterday the Novatel MiFi 4620L received a new modem firmware update, version 3.20.11 while both the “Router FW version” and “AP FW Version” stayed the same. We’re currently checking with our Verizon contacts to see what type of impact this will have on customers. One thing we did notice is after the update the device disables USB tethering in the admin interface. So, if you use your MiFi 4620L via USB in a computer or tether via USB in a Peplink Balance router be sure to re-enable this feature otherwise you’ll lose connectivity. Aside from that little quirk everything else seems to be working fine after the update so don’t be alarmed if you see a mandatory device update on your MIFi’s LCD screen.

Wireless carriers future plans include VoLTE, which is passing voice traffic in addition to data over 4G LTE. Right now carriers are only testing this service and customers will not see this hit the real world until 2013 at the earliest. Recently a study was conducted by Metrico Wireless showing a significant drop in battery performance when using voice calls over 4G LTE. According to the study authored by Ardeshir Ghanbarzadeh "The device's estimated battery life was reduced by 50 percent or about 252 minutes of talk time when voice calls were placed over the LTE network, compared to voice calls placed over the CDMA network." In order for carriers to transition voice service to 4G LTE they’ll have their work cut out for them trying to solve battery issues that will be a sure deal breaker for most customers. Unless the manufacturer's intend to use extended batteries larger than current factory batteries most users would run out of power midday.

Last Friday MetroPCS shares went up after Guggenheim security analyst Shing Yin said Sprint could make a bid of $12 to $13 per share for MetroPCS within the next four weeks. Yin says that this offer may be too steep for T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom to match while still pleasing their shareholders. Originally there was speculation that Sprint would make a counter offer back in October, but the idea was killed by the Sprint board at the last moment. In the meantime MetroPCS has been slowly launching out their 4th generation 4G LTE network giving customers access to higher data speeds. If Sprint purchases them it’ll give them an instant jump in 4G LTE coverage, while if T-Mobile purchases them it will be the first LTE network they can offer to customers.

Today AT&T announced they’ve expanded their 4G LTE network coverage into several new markets. Customers can now take advantage of the latest network in Puerto Rico, Salt Lake City, Reading Pennsylvania and Albuquerque New Mexico. This brings AT&T’s total 4G LTE cover to 105 markets, which exceeds their goal of 100 LTE markets by the end of 2012. They plan to have their entire HSPA+ footprint upgraded to LTE by the end of next year. The latest rollout helps add to their total, but they’re still far behind Verizon that currently offers 4G LTE in 441 markets. Users in a 4G LTE area should expect a minimum of 5-12Mbps down and 2-5Mbps up.

Sprint is working on their Network Vision plan and in order to expedite the process they’ve developed a new strategy to get people off the older iDen network. If you use an iDen phone you want to contact Sprint to upgrade to a new device, or you’ll face a $10 fee to stay on the iDen network until it officially closes in June of 2013. Customers that migrate over now are being offered a variety of very attractive device offers and can get rate packages similar to what they currently pay on the iDen network. After the iDen network is officially shut down Sprint plans to use that 800Mhz to help deploy 4G LTE coverage, which is currently available in 43 markets.

Still using iDen? Order a Sprint 3G/4G Modem