Sprint has been very busy lately, getting its LTE network ready for consumer use. The first tower cluster was turned on just before the end of last year and a list of the lucky markets where Sprint will first offer the service was just named by the carrier the other day. If you plan on offering 4G service, it might be a good idea to sell LTE enabled phones and some leaked ads show that the Samsung GALAXY Nexus will be the carrier's first LTE enabled handset.
It all sounds like things are falling into place for Sprint and their customers who have been hoping for a 4G option other than WiMax. To test how fast Sprint's LTE service is theoretically capable of going, a video shows a Huawei branded hotspot hooked up to a computer running on Sprint's LTE pipeline. The tower being used is one in the Houston area, and the person testing the network was 1.8 miles away from it and didn't have the kind of congestion that Sprint will eventually have on its network. In fact, you can assume that there was no one else in the area using the pipeline at the time.
The results on the original video showed some good Ping times and download speeds above 40Mbps and 5Mbps for uploads. The tester later said that upload speeds were capped at 5Mbps during the day. More importantly, the same guy later posted a newer video that revealed speeds closer to 50Mbps down on the Sprint LTE network. At the risk of beating a dead horse, without others using the network at the same time in the same area, it is like figuring out how long it takes to drive from Rockland County to Yankee Stadium by taking a drive at 3am when the streets are clear.
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