T-Mobile wants to catch up to Verizon and AT&T and to do so the wireless carrier is expanding its 4G coverage. With the expansion, T-Mobile says they can provide fast wireless service to more than 300 million people.

T-Mobile executives announced on Tuesday that its 4G LTE service is available to more than 300 million people, CNet reports. That is the same amount of people who can access 4G service from Verizon and AT&T.

T-Mobile plans to add 1 million square miles of new LTE coverage. This means that customers in areas like Missoula, Montana and parts of North and South Dakota will finally see high-speed wireless service.

"We have more than doubled our footprint of LTE this past year," Neville Ray, T-Mobile's CTO, said in an interview. "And we are actually expanding into new territory now with our LTE service, which means we're putting LTE into and onto rural ground and turf in brand new markets." 

By expanding its network, T-Mobile can now be a true direct competitor to AT&T and Verizon. Until now, T-Mobile focused only on big cities and its coverage map only reached about two-thirds of the U.S. Customers who found themselves traveling or living in rural or remote areas were not able to rely on T-Mobile. Now that has changed.

T-Mobile has made aggressive changes to its wireless offerings in the past two years. The No. 3 wireless carrier has offered no-contract wireless plans and promotions that have beat out their competitors.

Along with new promotions and pricing, T-Mobile has improved their network by making upgrades. These upgrades have helped T-Mobile perform better than AT&T and Verizon in some markets according to independent testing firms.

T-Mobile has purchased additional wireless spectrum to continue improving their network. This has lead to better wireless experiences for customers, including less dropped calls inside of buildings. 

With all of these improvements, the common thought that T-Mobile had poor wireless reliability is now an outdated concept.

T-Mobile now calls itself an excellent alternative to AT&T or Verizon.

"If you look at where people live and work, we are substantially on par now with Verizon," said Mike Sievert, T-Mobile's chief operating officer. "And we are still building."