Surpassing its own projection, T-Mobile US this week announced it met its goal to cover 280 million POPs with LTE. The announcement means the “Uncarrier” now has coverage equal to that of rival Sprint. T-Mobile had originally announced it planned to meet the coverage goal by the middle of 2015.

At his appearance at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray said the company’s goal is to cover 300 million POPs with LTE by the end of the year, a move he noted will allow the carrier to “take competition into more and more key areas of the U.S.”

T-Mobile has been rolling out its 700 MHz A Block spectrum, which Ray notes covers 190 million POPs. The company’s LTE coverage expansion will soon increase the number of markets it can operate a retail business within, allowing it to better compete with rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility. Verizon and AT&T now cover 308 million POPs with LTE.

Ray said that the overall LTE expansion is “a massive incremental opportunity” for T-Mobile, with spectrum deployed in several major U.S. markets. Currently, T-Mobile has at least 15x15 MHz LTE deployments in 150 markets, a figure the carrier hopes to expand to 200 by the end of 2015.

During the conference, T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter added that the carrier will be “relevant in a significant increase in population coverage in the U.S.” thanks to its recent LTE coverage expansion.

Both Ray and Carter also discussed T-Mobile’s MetroPCS brand. The company has more than 11 million MetroPCS subscribers, and the second half of 2015 will see T-Mobile work to greatly expand its MetroPCS markets and retails stores.

According to Carter, T-Mobile plans to shut down the legacy MetroPCS CDMA network in late June, as fewer than 300,000 subscribers are currently on the CDMA network. T-Mobile will still need to shut down the network in the major markets of Dallas, Miami, and New York City.  Nearly 80 percent of MetroPCS’s spectrum has been integrated into the T-Mobile network as of April 2015, with Ray noting T-Mobile has already integrated some of MetroPCS spectrum into its own network in the Dallas and New York areas.

With its POPs coverage, T-Mobile now stands squarely with Sprint, the carrier it failed to merge with in 2014. Recent industry speculation has also hinted at a possible deal brewing between T-Mobile and Dish Network.  During the conference, Ray acknowledged Dish’s strong mid-band spectrum holdings, but said T-Mobile already possesses a similar mid-band portfolio, and is not in desperate need of extra capacity. However, in his own remarks, Carter said T-Mobile will do what it needs to best benefit its shareholders.

“We have a fiduciary responsibility to evaluate any strategic opportunity,” Carter said. “And if it increased shareholder value in excess of what we see on a standalone basis, it would be something we would very much be inclined to do.”