Sprint officially launches 4G LTE in 15 cities

(Credit: Sprint)

Sprint has launched its 4G LTE network. The service is now available in several cities around Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, San Antonio, and Waco the company said in a press release on Monday.

In total, Sprint says that 15 cities now have access to its new LTE network. But the initial deployment is still rather concentrated among a few places in Georgia, Texas, and Sprint's headquarters in Kansas City. Sprint had announced the major market launches for 4G LTE earlier this month.

In Georgia, the company has established LTE in these markets: Atlanta, Athens, Calhoun, Carrollton, Newnan, and Rome. In Texas, Sprint now offers LTE in Dallas, Fort Worth, Granbury-Hood County, Houston, Huntsville, San Antonio, and Waco. And Sprint is also offering 4G LTE in its hometown Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, as well as St. Joseph, Missouri.

Sprint, which is the third largest wireless network in the U.S., was actually the first carrier in the U.S. to launch a so-called 4G wireless network. Through a partnership with Clearwire, Sprint launched its 4G service in 2008 using a technology called WiMax. While the technology itself works just fine, it has not been widely adopted by other wireless carriers around the world for mobile broadband use. So the company decided to launch its own 4G LTE network, using spectrum it had not given Clearwire as part of its WiMax partnership.

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