Sprint touts 5G progress apart from T-Mobile

As 2018 comes to a close, Sprint said it has much to show for the roughly $5 billion it spent upgrading its network throughout the course of this year. “We are celebrating a banner year for the Sprint network,” wrote CTO John Saw. “We made a massive investment to drive strong improvements in our network performance today and prepare to launch mobile 5G starting in the first half of next year. We’re ending this year with our biggest LTE data coverage footprint, LTE Advanced nationwide which is up to 2X faster than before on capable devices, and Gigabit Class LTE performance in more than 270 cities.” Sprint’s progress toward its 5G launch is noteworthy considering the company is working to close its proposed merger with T-Mobile. Under that blockbuster agreement, T-Mobile’s management would largely take control of the combined company and would embark on a major nationwide deployment of 5G services across T-Mobile’s 600 MHz and Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum.