While we were building our high-quality 3G network, we were already beginning to lay the foundation to roll out a truly robust 4G offering in the future. At Leap, our initial investments in our 3G network are enabling us to offer Cricket customers a true 3G experience now. Our data business is growing, sales are up for our 3G-enabled handsets, and we’re launching new 3G and smartphone devices to meet the growing demand. We’ve overlaid most of our footprint with 10 megahertz of spectrum to allow us to make the leap to 4G when the time is right. And it will cost less to roll out than 3G – creating more savings that we’ll be able to pass on to customers.
We understand the importance of expanding Cricket’s “unlimited” value proposition to include unlimited coverage. That’s why we have been working diligently to bring more access to more people. In the last few years we have fortified and expanded our own facilities-based networks to offer high-speed 3G wireless capabilities across all of our Cricket markets. We have further expanded the reach of our facilities-based networks by entering into strategic wholesale and roaming agreements with several wireless providers. These partnerships have enabled us to offer our customers nationwide coverage of nearly 285 million potential customers, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
This expanded coverage translates into unlimited opportunities for our customers to connect with the people who matter. Today Cricket offers unlimited nationwide talk and text on all of our plans, with unlimited nationwide data in our smartphone service plans, enabling our customers to have unlimited access to their plans’ data features, including mobile web and Cricket mobile e-mail, social networking and applications, anywhere within our wireless data coverage areas.
As a company that focuses on creating value for our customers, we are always looking for ways to identify efficiencies of cost. Our networks are no exception. Our high-speed, facilities-based 3G wireless networks across all of our Cricket markets create an important advantage in an increasingly data-driven business. These high-quality, all-digital, facilities-based networks leverage CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO wireless technologies, and cover nearly 95 million potential customers. We engineered our network from the ground up to support our unique brand promise, and deliver high capacity and outstanding quality at a low cost. We have invested in proven, spectrally-efficient networks to give our customers the best experience and the greatest value. Our engineering team excels at using spectrum efficiently, combined with an unparalleled understanding of what it takes to support our unlimited value proposition. By deploying advanced 3G technology, our operations are more efficient than those of other carriers, many of which have pieced networks together over time, and now have to manage multiple legacy technologies. We deploy cell sites only where we need them, and design our networks where our customers live, work and play. And we provide national service through carefully negotiated roaming agreements with strategic partners. What does this mean for our customers? The speed, high-capacity usage and coverage they need to download data, watch videos, play games and stay connected – at an affordable price.
We built our 3G network from the ground up with LTE in mind. We believe that the industry's data growth will tilt heavily toward 3G for several more years. We expect that the industry's data growth will begin evolving to LTE driven by the availability of affordable LTE devices. Using spectrum we already have available today, we expect to evolve our facilities-based network toward LTE progressively over the next few years. We believe that our LTE transition timing is good, and that we'll be well positioned to bring higher-speed offerings to our customers when LTE device pricing is appropriate.
