The company, which is believed to be nearing a pact to merge with SoftBank’s US unit, Sprint, wants to run the services in El Paso, Texas, and Augusta, Georgia, it says in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The company has applied for special temporary authority to carry out the tests – even though rivals AT&T and Verizon already run LTE-A services, which increase data speeds over regular LTE by using carrier aggregation – linking together data carriers on different frequencies to increase the speed of the overall service to the customer.
T-Mobile US plans to transmit data using 2155-2160MHz and 1755-1760MHz bands in El Paso using Ericsson equipment, and 2165-2170MHz and 1765-1770MHz bands in Augusta using Nokia equipment, said a statement from the company.
The US government forbids mainstream telecoms operators from using Huawei or ZTE equipment in their networks, though AT&T is understood to use Huawei’s LTE kit in Mexico.
