T-Mobile lights up HSPA+ in 1900 MHz spectrum in Kansas City

T-Mobile USA launched HSPA+ service on its 1900 MHz PCS spectrum in Kansas City, the second city that the carrier has launched using its refarmed spectrum.

T-Mobile announced the switchover in a company blog post Monday. "We are continuing to work at a rapid pace, advancing our network by installing new equipment, making our fast and dependable 4G nationwide network even better,"  wrote Greg Post, vice president and general manager of the Mountain Plains Region for T-Mobile. T-Mobile finished refarming its 1900 MHz spectrum for HSPA+ service in Las Vegas last month.

As part of its $4 billion network upgrade, T-Mobile plans to use its 1700 MHz AWS spectrum for LTE while it refarms its 1900 MHz spectrum for HSPA+ service. The carrier plans to launch LTE next year. T-Mobile is starting to turn up its HSPA+ service in the 1900 MHz band in other cities such as Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the New York City metro area.

T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray has said that the company will have a "material" footprint of refarmed 1900 MHz spectrum by year-end, according to GigaOM. T-Mobile plans on refarming its entire 229-city footprint for HSPA+ on PCS spectrum by mid-2013. T-Mobile plans to reserve a small slice of PCS spectrum for GSM services such as roaming and M2M connectivity.

T-Mobile recently reintroduced an unlimited smartphone plan and the company is actively trying to lure unlocked iPhone customers to its network. T-Mobile does not sell the iPhone directly. Curiously, T-Mobile last week quietly removed iPhone imagery from its promotion of the plan.

T-Mobile's plans to acquire flat-rate player MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS) also meshes well with its ongoing network transformation. T-Mobile plans to merge MetroPCS' existing LTE network into its own planned LTE network and to refarm MetroPCS' 1900 MHz CDMA spectrum for HSPA+ services.

For more:
- see this T-Mobile blog post
- see this GigaOM article

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