AT&T Mobility is looking to stay hot on the heels of rival Verizon Wireless in rolling out LTE services, announcing today that it plans to launch service in at least 50 more markets by the end of the year. The carrier said the planned expansion will push its coverage to more than 400 total markets and nearly 270 million potential customers covered.
The announcement comes on the heels of AT&T Mobility launching LTE in a handful of new markets this week, including New Bern, N.C.; Ruston, La.; Georgetown, S.C.; State College, Pa.; and Jayuya, P.R. The carrier added that its LTE network currently covered 225 million pops across 370 markets.
While AT&T Mobility is looking to hit 400-plus markets by year-end, Verizon Wireless noted at mid-year that it had launched LTE services in 500 markets, covering more than 301 million pops, or roughly 99% of its legacy 3G footprint across all 50 states. Verizon Wireless did have a nearly one-year head start in rolling out LTE services, beginning its launch in late 2010. AT&T Mobility did not launch its first LTE markets until Sept. 2011, though it had previously marketed its HSPA+-based service as “4G” matching similar marketing efforts by T-Mobile USA.
Smaller rivals Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile US are also trying to stay in the LTE coverage game, with both operators claiming they will have 200 million pops covered by their respective networks by the end of 2013.
Helping Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility in the quest for coverage is their use of 700 MHz spectrum licenses for their initial LTE launches, compared with the 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum being used by T-Mobile US and the 1.9 GHz spectrum being used by Sprint. The 700 MHz band has greater propagation characteristics than the higher spectrum bands, thus allowing Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility to hit greater coverage with fewer towers.
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