Unlimited mobile operator MetroPCS teams with ZTE for 4G devices

American mobile operator MetroPCS and Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE have announced that they’re working together to create LTE handsets for the American market. The two companies have been working together, producing inexpensive handsets for MetroPCS subscribers.

MetroPCS is an American carrier that prides itself on being unlimited. All of it’s various plans include unlimited use of something, from just local calls on the lower price plans, up to local and national calls, global SMS, MMS, IM, email and web access on the bigger packages.

MetroPCS was the first regional carrier in America to announce that it was working on an LTE network. It hopes to have it ready by the end of 2010. And when the network is ready to go, MetroPCS wants to have a range of ZTE handsets to go with it. Forbes reports that the ZTE smartphone will have a large screen and a HTML browser - no mention of whether or not it will have a QWERTY keyboard, but I reckon that’s a fairly safe assumption.

What we think?

I think this is good news, I must say. The deals between MetroPCS and ZTE have so far produced a range of fairly cheap, useful handsets that perform well on the networks unlimited plans. I can only hope that their LTE expansion will continue that trend. I’ve said before that I really believe smartphone usage will truly rocket when handset prices come down and mobile Internet speed goes up.