The official announcement from Sprint concerning their first tri-band 4G LTE devices was made a couple of months ago, and it is nice to see that the company has not forgotten about their commitment to deliver tri-band 4G LTE modems to the masses. In fact, Sprint will begin to ship this bunch of tri-band 4G LTE modems from July 19th onwards.
Just what are the models that would be put up for sale? They would be the Novatel MiFi 500, Netgear Zing Mobile Hotspot and Netgear 341U USB dongle, where regardless of which particular model that you decide to pick up, all of them would be able to support the 800MHz, 1900MHz and 2.5GHz bands. The hotspots will cost you $49.99 with a new contract, although the dongle is a whole lot more affordable at $19.99, but that is only after you send in your $50 mail-in-rebate. The Zing is capable of traversing GSM networks where it will be accompanied by a 2,500mAh battery, and Sprint has also laid claim to a 10 hour battery life on the Novatel MiFi 500, where plans for that will begin at $34.99 monthly for 3GB of combined 3G/4G data, accompanied by an additional $15 for 6GB of combined 3G/4G data. Those who are really data hungry can fork out $80 to quadruple your data usage to 12GB. [Press Release]