Sprint on Wednesday activated a new, faster 4G network under the "LTE Plus" moniker, in some cases doubling peak connection speeds to 100 megabits per second or faster.

The network is presently available in 77 U.S. markets, such as New York City, San Francisco, Miami, and Austin. It's based on the LTE Advanced standard and more specifically exploits technologies like beamforming and carrier aggregation, i.e. joining multiple channels.

Beyond raw speed, Sprint is also promising double the network capacity, and further signal range on the 2.5 gigahertz band. Two other bands — 800-megahertz and 1.9 gigahertz — are potentially slower, but serve as backups for better coverage. The 800 band is said to be intended for indoor reception.

13 devices are LTE Plus-compatible at the moment, most notably the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, which can (in theory) support LTE Advanced speeds up to 300 megabits per second.