First LTE cluster rolled out by Sprint, claims 3G enhancements are coast to Coast

Sprint announced this morning that their first LTE cluster went live today in a town called Kankakee located in Illinois. Looking at Google maps and checking out the census, is a fairly small town of about 112,524. At least according to the census in 2008. It is located about 60 miles outside of Chicago and seems like a rather good place to light things up for testing. We sure don’t want Chicago or another major city to go live if things don’t work right. They are claiming that this rollout will complete their field tests and we can all expect to see their first full-fledged LTE device landing sometime mid 2012.

If they stay on track, there should be plenty more cities up and running before the first official device lands that will support the service. It is a pretty safe approach. No good in launching a device that ‘claims’ to be fast with out a network to support it yet.

When they first announced their LTE plans back in October they also made it a point to mention that the current 3G network would start seeing improvements. As many of you Sprint customers may have found out, the 3G speeds took a hug dump over the last couple of months. It was even compared to T-Mobiles 2G speed. Talk about a bad thing to be compared to, 2G is slower than a 3 legged horse in the Kentucky Derby.

Along with todays LTE announcement they also announced that the 3G network has been upgraded from coast to coast. Not owning a Sprint device myself, I can’t attest to any speed improvements or if it is all just smoke. Let us know if you notice anything on your device.

Sprint still has a lot of work to do between now and the end of 2013, which is when they claim national LTE coverage to be completed by. With Verizon and AT&T well ahead of them, we will have to wait and see how well these updates go for Sprint over the next 2 years.

Source: AndroidandMe