That is the question indeed, on many of our minds! Much like the confusion around AT&T and T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ – an update to 3G, but not quite comparable to LTE performance – carriers are leading customers to believe they’ll be getting all that 5G service has been promising – faster speeds and lower latency. However, that’s not quite the case. 5G operates on many different bands, some of which are simply repurposed from LTE. This makes it typically better than LTE, but not quite at the level of 5G (or at least our perceptions of what it should be).
So what about the coverage maps showing 5G service? And your phone says 5G sometimes, right? Here’s what that can mean…
- 5G running on Low Band spectrum is the slowest, but it has the advantage of considerable range
- Mid-band can’t travel as far, but is faster
- High Band spectrum, which is sparsely available, may travel only a mile but is by far the fastest.
An analysis done by OpenSignal released last week found that their testers connected with T-Mobile 5G just 34.7% of the time, AT&T 16.4% of the time and Verizon just 9.7%. And that’s generally not for the fastest 5G service.
In comparison, the numbers shown have quite a significant difference to what the carriers promise about 5G in their advertisements. This just goes to show you that not everything advertised is in fact true. Carriers admit they are still working on their 5G networks and that there is quite a bit of “dishonesty in advertising.” Still, we can see in the fine print how they manage to get away with it. Though, you wonder for how long?
National Advertising Division – a division of the independent non-profit organization BBB National Program – has criticized claims made about 5G by all three of the companies. “5G right now is (in) the fake it until you make it stage,” said Harold Feld, of advocacy group Public Knowledge which promotes affordable communication, adding that when new technology is developed, advertising often gets ahead of actual deployment.
For more on this story, head to the Washington Post.
