T-Mobile Now Offering HSPA+ Service to 85 Million Americans

T-Mobile is in the process of rolling out 3.5G service across the United States, and has announced that it is now offering HSPA+ to 85 million Americans in close to 50 metropolitan areas.

In real-word testing, this HSPA+ network offers an average download speed of nearly 3 Mbps and an upload speed of almost 1.3 Mbps. That makes it faster than Sprint's WiMAX network, which is advertised as being 4G.

T-Mobile is on track to deliver HSPA+ in 100 major metropolitan areas, covering 185 million people in the U.S., by the end of this year.

The latest cities getting 3.5G service are scattered around the country, and include areas in Texas, Ohio, Hawaii, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, and other states.

T-Mobile's current smartphones get some benefit from this faster network, but its first fully HSPA+-capable smartphone isn't coming out until later this summer.