Speaking at an investor conference last week, Sprint CFO Joe Euteneuer indicated that the US mobile giant expects to deploy time duplex-long term evolution (TD-LTE) technology across 5,500 WiMAX base stations belonging to its wholly owned subsidiary Clearwire by the end of the year. Fierce Wireless quotes Euteneuer as saying, "When you see that 2500MHz spectrum being deployed, that’s when you will really get that speed differential that we have been touting."

As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in July this year Sprint revealed that it was poised to commence selling so-called "tri-band" devices that can access LTE technology across the 800MHz, 1900MHz and 2500MHz frequency bands. The cellco first launched LTE services using 1900MHz spectrum in July 2012, referring to the spectrum as ‘the primary band in its 4G LTE nationwide build-out’, while 30 June saw the company shut down its legacy 800MHz iDEN network, allowing the remaining spectrum to be repurposed as part of its "Network Vision" scheme. Most recently, the acquisition of the 50 percent of Clearwire that it did not already own meant that Sprint was also able to add Clearwire’s sought-after 2500MHz spectrum to its LTE coverage portfolio. Sprint said of the new spectrum, "It excels at broad-based, high speed coverage, and is expected to provide Sprint customers increased speeds and capacity in densely populated cities."