T-Mobile’s largest investment ever, of nearly $8 billion, looks set to deliver on a bold promise made over a year ago, which raised a fair share of eyebrows at the time, slowly turning into genuine screams of horror and cries of despair from stingy rivals.

Verizon’s “strained” network will fall further behind Magenta’s nationwide coverage and speed once a massive 1 million square miles of 600 MHz spectrum the “Un-carrier” owns is deployed “by year end”, according to the latest official update on this incredible technological breakthrough.

Apparently, T-Mo’s 600 MHz timeline is “ahead of expectations”, with all of FCC’s necessary licenses coming through yesterday, and the “first sites ready for testing this summer.”

“Clear and wide-open for customers”, the premium low-band spectrum acquired a couple of months back in an industry auction Big Red bizarrely chose to sit out should allow T-Mobile to “cover every single American”, and provide a “better, faster experience”, especially in rural areas to begin with.

But the fast-growing, always-improving operator’s efforts are useless without actual phones capable of tapping into this 600 MHz power. While Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X20 LTE modem integrated into the 835 processor technically supports the network boost, it’s only “later this year” that commercial devices are “anticipated to arrive”, from Samsung (can you say Galaxy Note 8?) and “other manufacturers.” Next step, true 5G speeds and decent availability.