T-Mobile improves 4G coverage in Dallas area

When T-Mobile announced its merger agreement with MetroPCS last week, its Dallas-area employees were at the Sheraton Downtown Dallas Hotel celebrating the company's 10th anniversary.

Despite the news of the merger agreement, executives for the company remained consistent in their message to employees and the general public: T-Mobile has the nation's largest 4G network, and the company believes it offers the best 4G service.

At the event, Andrew Sherrard, T-Mobile's interim chief marketing officer, said that, for the first time, T-Mobile customers are spending less time talking and more time using mobile data.

"We're just at the very beginning of this revolution in mobile data," Sherrard said. "On our network, we've seen traffic increase over 70 percent compared to a year ago. People are using things like Netflix and YouTube, and data consumption is dramatically increasing."

For the Dallas market specifically, the company has seen data usage skyrocket. Roughly 80 percent of consumers who come into Dallas-area stores to activate service with T-Mobile or upgrade to a new phone are getting smartphones.

To meet the growing data demand, T-Mobile launched an unlimited 4G data plan Sept. 5. As its name implies, that plan features no overage costs or data limits. In the Dallas area, T-Mobile has about 1,000 cell sites that have been upgraded to the network's high-speed 4G HSPA+ format.

Jon Freier, regional vice president and general manager of the Dallas area for T-Mobile, said the 4G coverage will benefit North Texas T-Mobile customers.

"Dallas is one of our biggest and fastest-growing markets, and we're working as fast as we can to get the network to become faster and more reliable," he said. "Everything from Frisco to Flower Mound, Plano and the majority of the Dallas area is now 4G."

What the improved towers mean for consumers, Sherrard said, is a faster network and fewer dropped calls.

"Here in Dallas, we're seeing a lot of data usage, especially turn-by-turn navigation," Freier added. "People are spending a lot of time in their cars, going different directions and using that navigation service we offer as part of your contract."

To meet the needs of the growing market, T-Mobile will also be opening three new stores in Denton and Collin counties.

T-Mobile's coverage in the Dallas area will be getting better in the coming months, too.

When T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, announced last Wednesday it had entered a merger agreement with Richardson-based MetroPCS, it was quick to point out the improved coverage the proposed merger would result in.

Regardless of what happens with that merger agreement, however, the company's coverage in North Texas will be improving.

In 2011, AT&T and T-Mobile had agreed to a merger of their own. When that merger wasn't able to meet regulatory approval, however, AT&T was forced to pay a breakup fee to T-Mobile that included a portion of the company's wireless spectrum.

That wireless spectrum -- the radio frequencies that wireless providers license from the government -- will allow T-Mobile to expand its coverage across the United States. Dallas was one of the key markets that will be covered by T-Mobile's new wireless spectrum from AT&T.

"What's cool about that is we're going to be able to give a much better and richer experience," Sherrard said. "We're going to have more spectrum available in cities like Dallas. That breakup allowed us to basically reuse some of our existing spectrum for LTE [a new high-speed wireless standard]."

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