Cricket to debut LTE network in Tuscon

Cricket‘s LTE plans are almost ready. They mentioned a roll-out later this year, and according to VP of device development Matt Stoiber they’re on track for just that. The first market will be Tuscon, Arizona. Typically roll-out and test markets are smaller ones, so this does make sense. Cricket is taking a different tack than competitor MetroPCS. The latter started with a shoddy phone when it rolled out its LTE network, and didn’t get a real LTE phone until February. Since it already deals in mobile broadband services, Cricket is starting off with an LTE laptop card, the Huawei E397. It will work on both 3G and 4G bands, so Tusconers have nothing to fear. We can expect Cricket to pick up some LTE handsets sometime in 2012. Via PC Magazine.]]>