At a IEE conference this week, Sprint CTO John Saw discussed the technology behind the carrier’s 5G network, how Sprint’s deployment differs from other carriers, and their in-progress rollouts. Saw explained that Sprint’s large holding of spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band gives them the unique ability to simultaneously enable LTE and 5G in the same footprint, something other carriers will have a much harder time doing on the lower frequencies. “With 5G, for the first time, we’re pretty much going to use up every megahertz we have in the 2.5 band,” he said. “We’re going to simultaneously enable LTE and 5G on the 2.5 band. What that means is we’re able to have the same footprint, in terms of coverage, within 5G and 4G. It’s not easy to do if you are building a 5G network on millimeter wave and your LTE network is running on cellular channels.”
Massive MIMO is the technology behind the strategy, and Sprint is currently upgrading thousands of cell sites with Massive MIMO to support LTE and 5G at the same time. Sprint is in the process of launching 5G to 9 initial markets and has promoted the fact that their test markets will receive wide coverage, not just small test zones of 5G.
