T-Mobile first in U.S. to operate LTE-U network

Six cities across T-Mobile's network are now running LTE-U. Using publicly available airwaves in the 5GHz band, it gives the carrier more capacity while offering faster data speeds for T-Mobile customers. Speaking of customers, those with compatible smartphones in the LTE-U locations don't have to do a darn thing in order to access it. And the same features that T-Mobile uses to beef up its 4G LTE pipeline will also work with LTE-U.

That means Carrier Aggregation, 256 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) and 4x4 MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) are being employed on LTE-U. Because ...