I agree that they have more coverage in aggregate but when you go out into the boondocks. You don’t get LTE. That “1%” makes a difference in rural areas.
> I agree that they have more coverage in aggregate but when you go out into the boondocks. You don’t get LTE. That “1%” makes a difference in rural areas.
For Sprint this is the case that they are relying on 1X to cover the sticks with 800mhz)
T-Mobile had to build a fairly dense network with towers broadcasting 1900mhz GSM back in the day. They had less spectrum and it was mostly mid-band (1900 and AWS).
T-Mobile can now broadcast 600mhz and 700mhz in most markets LTE-only. So uh yeah, rural markets you would only receive LTE or nothing. AWS and 1900 doesn't propagate as far nor does it penetrate obstacles like the low band does.
I’m not disagreeing that they have more. I’m saying that when you are stuck without LTE in the boondocks. You’d much rather fallback to GSM/HSDPA than CDMA.
> Why would you need to fall back if there is more LTE coverage than 3G/CDMA coverage?
More LTE coverage than 3G doesn't mean the LTE coverage area is a superset of the 3G coverage area, as long as there is any 3G coverage area that doesn't have LTE coverage, you might benefit from fallback to avoid no coverage.
