With the coronavirus keeping people home and more and more Americans transitioning to telecommuting and online schooling, the demand for fast and reliable internet access is soaring daily. T-Mobile is working to increase their network capacity by utilizing 600MHz spectrum from other companies and expanding their partnership with Sprint.
For the first part of their plan, T-Mobile is borrowing or renting 600MHz spectrum from several companies, including Dish Network, Comcast, and others. This additional spectrum will allow T-Mobile to keep up with demand and avoid traffic overload and slower data speeds. Additionally, to help customers in rural areas, T-Mobile has expanded its roaming deal with Sprint, allowing schools, families and rural Americans who are Sprint subscribers to access T-Mobile’s 4G LTE network for the next 60 days.
Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s president of technology, said, “In trying times like this, we understand how important it is for people to remain connected – to family and friends, to resources and information, to their jobs via teleworking or schools via virtual classrooms. And we take our responsibility to keep our customers connected incredibly seriously. We can’t thank these partners and the FCC enough for coming together to provide people across the country with the critical connectivity they’re relying on right now.”