T-Mobile LTE-U arrives for customers in a handful of US cities

T-Mobile has announced that LTE-Unlimited, otherwise known as LTE-U, is now available to customers in a handful of cities in the US. These cities include some big places like Las Vegas and Brooklyn, as well as some smaller places like Dearborn, Michigan and Richardson, Texas. If you do live in one of these regions and you're a T-Mobile subscriber, there's still a catch: your phone has to support LTE-U and yours probably doesn't.

In a statement yesterday, T-Mobile announced that it is the first nationwide wireless service provider to offer LTE-U to its customers, a new boasting point for the Uncarrier. With LTE-U, the company takes advantage of 'publicly available 5GHz airwaves' to boost its LTE capacity, giving customers faster speeds all the while. That's great for mobile users who increasingly utilize the Internet via their mobile connection.

T-Mobile's LTE-U is now available in the above mentioned cities, as well as Bellevue, WA, and Simi Valley, CA — however, only in 'select locations' within the cities. LTE-U availability will be expanded later on this year, though T-Mobile doesn't say to what extent. If you're in a place where it is available, you don't have to do anything to get it...you just need to have a compatible smartphone, which is the big sticking point at the moment.

What phones support LTE-U? The Samsung Galaxy S8 at the moment, and that's it. If you have the Korean company's latest flagship, you're a T-Mobile customer and you're in one of these magical spots, you should be able to enjoy very, very fast LTE speeds. For everyone else, you'll just have to rest easy knowing that big changes are inbound, but not quite yet mainstream.

SOURCE: T-Mobile