T-Mobile flips the switch on the first 600MHz LTE service

The race to 5G may still be a ways off, but mobile carriers are still working to make the most of their 4G LTE networks, and T-Mobile is no exception.

The magenta-colored company announced today that it's successfully activated a 600MHz cellular LTE network site in Cheyenne, Wyoming — the first ever of its kind.

Operating on a previously open frequency, purchased during the Federal Communications Commission's auction of premium low-band spectrum licenses, the 600MHz LTE network claims to offer better coverage and less data congestion compared to the 700MHz network used by most large carriers today.

After Wyoming, T-Mobile plans to expand its newly minted 600MHz network to other rural locations such as Northwest Oregon, West Texas, Southwest Kansas, the Oklahoma panhandle, Western North Dakota, Maine, Coastal North Carolina, Central Pennsylvania, Central Virginia and Eastern Washington.

While active, it will still be a while before T-Mobile's record-breaking record becomes sees widespread use.

According to the carrier, it will still take some time for today's phones to catch up with the tech, with Samsung and LG planning to launch phones capable of tapping into the new network by the fourth quarter of this year.

T-Mobile is also still hard at work preparing the rest of its network for the eventual switch to 5G, the next-gen (albeit currently undefined) mobile communications standard that the carrier hopes to have ready for consumers nationwide by 2020.