Just before the one-year anniversary of the launch of the “Uncarrier,” T-Mobile has announced the next round of network modernization upgrades. This upgrade cycle will bring LTE service to 250 million people by the end of 2014, and 300 million by the summer of 2015.

Back when T-Mobile first detailed its strategy for upgrading its network, it had noted that this strategy would be deployed to its entire network. However, it had only committed to upgrading the 35,000 GSM+UMTS cell sites it had at the time (covering 225 million people). That had later grown to 37,000 cell sites (covering 230 million people) through organic upgrades, and then 40,000 from the MetroPCS acquisition. That left about 15,000 cell sites covering 70 million people.

At this point, T-Mobile is nearly complete with its upgrade to 40,000 cell sites. The remaining 20 million people where T-Mobile hasn’t announced LTE service either has soft-launched service or is being tested right now and optimized before access is given to subscribers. Within the next couple of months, that service will be fully activated and announced.