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June 6, 2010

Leap Wireless has begun testing its new LTE service, but the wireless carrier is looking to take a steady approach at rolling out its new technology that could help it cut down on the overall cost of deployment in the long haul. Leap started its first testing phase Friday, and phase two is planned to begin Monday.

Leap's competitor MetroPCS said last week that it plans to have commercial LTE services up and running by the end of 2010 and has already announced both infrastructure and device partners.

Leap’s CEO Hutcheson seemed unimpressed by the progress made by Metro PCS as Leap’s current CDMA-2000 1x EV-DO network is being used to support the advanced data services used by its wireless customers.

Hutcheson said Leap has started to put some pieces in place for an eventual LTE rollout. Those pieces include overlaying some of its current markets with 10 megahertz of new spectrum needed to deploy an LTE network, which Leap expects will be enough to support services for the next decade.

Hutcheson added that the wireless carrier is running a small 4G network in one of its markets and expects to have a trial network sometime in September or October.

“We like where we are on 3G for now,” Hutcheson added. MetroPCS, on the other hand, has only updated its network to EV-DO capabilities in a couple of U.S. markets and is more interested in moving to LTE for its high-speed data needs.

Hutcheson also said that Leap is greatly encouraged by recent data pricing changes in the wireless industry that has shown some upward mobility.

Leap has also begun trialing different pricing plans for the service ranging in data transmission from 1.5 gigabytes to 10 gigabytes and at prices points from $40 to $60 a month.

Leap currently offers two pricing plans for its mobile broadband service including 5 GB of service for $40 per month or 10 GB for $50 per month.

Unlike some of its larger competitors, Leap doesn't charge over-average fees for customers going over their allotted data plan and instead throttles down the speed of the service to those users.

Hutcheson said that Leap expects to begin broader LTE deployments in the next three to four years, starting with hot spot locations in high data-density market centers such as New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Leap said the timing should be in the heart of LTE devices gaining scalability as well as allowing network infrastructure costs to come down sometime near the end of the year.

Leap’s current data plans appear to be of increasing importance to the company as its current mobile broadband offering has already gained some traction in the U.S. market both for its lack of a required contract as well as its $40 price point.

The wireless carrier said that at the end of the first quarter it had signed up more than 600,000 customers to its mobile broadband service-- about 7 percent more than it had expected when the company made sales projections in December 2009.

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Source: Leap Wireless.