T-Mobile has started rolling out an invitation-only pilot program for its wireless home internet service that is targeting to reach up to 50,000 homes by the end of 2019.
The service will charge $50 per month for access to unlimited LTE data in rural areas and markets that have limited internet access in the country. With this pilot program, the Magenta carrier is testing the ability to deliver high-speed internet to the home ahead of the arrival of 5G.
In future, T-Mobile hopes that it will be able to rely on 5G to offer much faster wireless home internet service, but for now, the speeds will max out at 50Mbps on LTE. 5G is able to deliver up to 100Mbps.
The pilot program is invite-only, meaning only a limited set of interested users will get to try the initial rollout. There are no data caps and contracts, rather, the carrier will simply send you a free LTE router/receiver that you’ll set up yourself.
T-Mobile has been using this project as a bargaining chip in its merger with Sprint. By beginning the pilot program, the carrier hopes that the FCC will see it as improving competition among cable companies and eventually approve the merger.
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