Dallas – MetroPCS expanded its 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE)
network to four more markets – Atlanta and Jacksonville, Miami and Orlando –
bringing the total number of 4G markets to 13.
The other markets are Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit, Las
Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Sacramento and San Francisco.
The first market — Las Vegas —
last September.
The prepaid-service carrier, which offers flat-rate service with
no annual contracts, currently offers only one LTE-equipped handset, which is
also the only LTE handset currently available in the U.S. That is the Samsung
Craft entertainment-oriented feature phone at $299 after $50 instant rebate in
the carrier’s stores and website.
For the phone, the carrier recently expanded its selection of plans
to three from two by offering a new lower price $40/month plan to complement
new $50 and $60/month plans. The latter two offer more multimedia choices than
the $55 and $60 plans they replace.
The $40 service plan
offers unlimited talking, texting, 4G web browsing and unlimited YouTube
access. The $50 plan adds international and premium text messaging, cloud-based
turn-by-turn navigation, mobile instant messaging and corporate email.
Additional premium features available when connected to Wi-Fi include music
streaming and downloading and ability to preview and trial video content. The
$60 plan adds unlimited data access and premium content such as 18
video-on-demand channels and audio downloads.
The previous $60 plan
included downloads of full-track songs, ringtones and ring-back tones as well
as premium on-demand streaming video from select networks.
With Samsung’s Craft entertainment-oriented phone, data travels
over MetroPCS’s 1.7/2.1GHz AWS-band network, and voice travels over its 1.9GHz
CDMA 1x network. The phone does not provide simultaneous voice and data
sessions. The phone also features slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Samsung’s TouchWiz
user interface and 3.2-megapixel camera with flash.
