Las Vegas Network Refarm Now 75% Live, Nationwide LTE Network Coming By End Of 2013

T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray, speaking at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference this afternoon has confirmed that the Las Vegas market is now at least 75% live as T-Mobile’s first refarmed spectrum on the 1900 band. T-Mobile continues to refarm its 1900 MHz spectrum for use on the HSPA+ band with other major cities such as Seattle, New York City, and Washington, D.C. expected to live soon as well.

As for LTE, Ray says T-Mobile will deploy 10 x 10 MHz channels across 90% of the top 25 US markets when it launches LTE next year. Ray went on to say that T-Mobile will have a nationwide LTE footprint by the end of 2013, but would not specify any targets for total expected coverage.

Ray said that T-Mobile’s LTE “…Will be one of the fastest LTE offerings that will be in the marketplace.”

I know a lot of you will fill the comments below with questions for your own geographic area, so I’ll try and emphasize that all Ray would say today is that a “material” part of T-Mobile’s network will be refarmed and ready for the iPhone by years end. He wouldn’t give any specific beyond that. Personally, it’s understandable that T-Mobile doesn’t want to give any specific deadlines they may not be able to make, as not all the network refarming is up to them. T-Mobile has said end of year since they first announced the refarm, so we’ll continue to focus on that timeframe and hope our own cities go live before then.

GigaOM@kfitchard, @yeswap, Fierce Wireless

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