T-Mobile gearing up to deliver big boost to its LTE speeds

T-Mobile is gearing up to boost maximum theoretical internet speeds for its customers by a wide margin supporting speeds up to 400 mbps – nearly half the speed of Google Fiber.

''I'm proud to announce that we're first … to introduce a new technology that delivers a massive … speed boost to customers,'' wrote T-Mobile chief technology officer Neville Ray.

''We're already on to the next big thing.''

The technology Ray refers to is multiple input, multiple output, or MIMO for short, and essentially worked like a freeway. In conventional wireless the flow of data is channeled down two or so physical antennas, or lanes, however, in more complex implementations of MIMO, the number of transmitters in both towers and the devices with which they communicated was increased. This subsequently reduced the potential for congestion, if one ''lane'' filled with data, others could compensate which resulted in higher average download and upload speeds.

It was not new technology, exactly. In 2014, T-Mobile deployed its precursor, 2×2 MIMO, and Verizon and Sprint have since implemented their own configurations.

However, according to Ray, T-Mobile's newest iteration, 4×4, delivered speeds up to ''two times'' faster than its old network ever could. Also it was already live across a good part of the country - 319 cities, he added.

But only Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge would be able  to use the tech via a software update ''later this month.'' According to T-Mobile though, more phones would be able to take advantage of the tech 'soon.'

But this was only part of what T-Mobile had lined up.

In a bigger speed boost, in October, the company would roll out 256 QAM support to the S7 and S7 Edge (and again, more phones later), which would boost the amount of bits per transmission. T-Mobile claims this would lead to theoretical maximum speeds of 400 Mbps.

According to commentators, these were numbers that depended highly on conditions, but the figures were impressive nonetheless.