06 December 2023

UScellular has been awarded over US$5.8 million from the Missouri Cell Towers Grant Program to improve mobile and in-home connectivity in multiple counties across the state.

The Missouri Cell Towers Grant Program is dedicated to investing in the expansion of cellular service throughout the state. With this funding, UScellular has announced plans to construct 11 new cell sites, thereby expanding wireless coverage in the following 19 counties: Adair, Audrain, Clark, Howell, Knox, Laclede, Lewis, Marion, Monroe, Oregon, Ozark, Pike, Ralls, Randolph, Schuyler, Scotland, Shelby, Texas, and Wright.

UScellular expects the new towers to be constructed and operational late in 2025. Building and maintaining a new cell tower in rural areas can cost twice as much as building one in an urban centre, meaning programs like this play a crucial role in enabling wireless carriers to quickly and efficiently connect residents.

Moreover, UScellular will be discontinuing its CDMA network in 2024 and reallocating the network for 4G/LTE services. The company CEO said that “of note regarding our network initiatives, we will be shutting down our CDMA network at the beginning of 2024. Our team has done an excellent job migrating the customer base away from CDMA-dependent devices. Less than 42,000 customers are left and that’s down from 386,000 just 18 months ago. We believe we’re going to continue to see more customers migrate over the next several months. We intend to reform that spectrum to support our LTE network. And we expect to see additional systems operation savings once that CDMA network is fully shut down in 2024.”

UScellular utilises the 800MHz and 1900MHz spectrum to provide CDMA services. The company anticipates that by the end of 2024, approximately 50% of data traffic will be handled by sites equipped with mid-band spectrum.