Sprint's LTE up to 443 cities?

I must have missed a press release because my last count was 340 cities.  Maybe, they're counting individual cities in a metropolitan area now but the addition of 41 cities does not come to 443, as far as I can tell.  Maybe, this is why they have so many billing problems?  They can't do math correctly.

In any case, I was reading this article on Android Central.

Sprint has announced Spark is up and running in 24 cities, including a fresh six:

Austin, Texas
Baltimore

Chicago
Dallas
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Fort Worth, Texas
Houston
Jacksonville, Fla.
Kansas City, Kan./Mo.
Los Angeles
Miami
New York
Newark, N.J.
Oakland, Calif.
Orlando, Fla.
Philadelphia
Provo, Utah;
Salt Lake City
San Antonio
Tacoma, Wash.
Tampa, Fla.
Trenton, N.J.
Waukegan, Ill.
West Palm Beach, Fla.

Spark is their 3 band/frequency LTE.  I looked at the choices and wondered why some were chosen.  The Texas and Florida locations make sense, as to thumb their nose at the New AT&T/SBC/BellSouth.  My iPhone 5c is only a 2 band device, so I'll never know the joy of incredible speed.  Oh, no.  Equally, my Verizon mobile hotspot is a 2 band device, but then, they only have two frequencies, unlike poor, beleaguered Sprint, which is finally reaping a little benefit for all those catastrophic losses taking on Nextel.

I found the full list of active LTE markets here.

I was amused to find the town where I live to be on the active list.  I'm not sure the Sprint store sees an active LTE signal, and it's close to the main road.  I lose the signal when I've driven about 500 feet from the main road, though in the harder hit areas of town, LTE works more reliably.  It would be difficult to explain to a customer why they can't get a signal next to their store, though.  This particular tower services the shopping centers and is overloaded much of the time.  However, with their upgrades, there should not be a problem, and Verizon's LTE reaches my house just fine for my mobile hotspot.  (I couldn't connect with my Sprint hotspot and switched the hotspot to Verizon while keeping my phone with Sprint, so I'd have at least one working all the time.)


I'm sure, about the time I'm moving in June, they'll have LTE working just fine somewhere around here.  Then, I'll go through the frustration in the next area.  I noticed that Modesto, CA is active and they seem to be working their way north along state road 99, so hopefully, more from that area will be active this summer.

Update 2014.05.01: A while ago, I was seeing 1xRTT service, which tells me that they're trying to finish the final tower here, but they're likely running into problems keeping service going while converting it.  You'd think that it wouldn't be so primitive--and that they'd be working in the middle of the night when most people are asleep or at work.

Update 2014.05.02: I got a message a bit ago that the enhanced network is working.   I guess it is enhanced in that it's not so slow, but LTE is not available in most places.  Getting the data is the most important thing, unless it's so slow that it can't be measured in whole numbers.

Later in the day, I was traveling down Ohio SR 503 from SR 122 to SR 73, noticing that the cows were well-equipped with LTE, better than those living in anything big enough to be considered a city in Ohio.  Are the technicians just not able to focus their efforts on the heavily-used towers first?