Category: 5G News

December 21 was a big day for AT&T, as they turned on their mobile 5G service in 12 cities in the US: Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, San Antonio, and Waco. AT&T subscribers in those markets can now take advantage of the super fast speeds of 5G – but only via the 5G-capable Netgear Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot, currently the only 5G-capable device available to use with the service. Furthermore, interested users can’t sign up online or in store like they can for AT&T’s other services – prospective customers must start at AT&T’s 5G site (there is one for business users and one for consumers).

2019 should bring 5G to a wider audience as well as more devices to use with it (Samsung is planning a 5G Galaxy Smartphone, and others will surely follow).

AT&T has been upgrading their LTE network, and in an arguably misleading move, AT&T will begin showing “5G E” on LTE phones in areas that use the upgraded LTE services. This service is NOT true 5G service – it is a faster, upgraded 4G LTE service – but AT&T is calling it “5G Evolution.”

“If they have one of the latest Android devices and it connects to a tower that’s enabled with 5G Evolution, they’ll soon see a “5G E” indicator pop up on their screen,” an AT&T spokesperson wrote in response to questions from FierceWireless. “Initially we’ll roll this out on a handful of devices, with more devices showing the indicator in spring 2019.”

While the service is faster than LTE, it is not 5G and this could be very confusing for customers.

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Sprint and T-Mobile got one step closer on their journey towards merging, with approval coming in from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States on Monday. This committee is a government panel that reviews deals involving foreign investors and is an important step for the two carriers to clear.

There are still other regulators that must approve the deal, but requests from the US Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense to delay the deal have been withdrawn, another victory for the merger. “We are pleased to achieve both of these important milestones in the journey to build the New T-Mobile,” CEO John Legere said in a statement.

AT&T plans to launch 5G in 12 cities by the end of the year, so there should be lots of news coming from the carrier over the next few weeks about their 5G service. While they’ve made many general announcements about their standards-based 5G network and the cities that will get the service, there are a lot of specifics that have not yet been discussed. Price of the service, speeds, and capacity are a few important details that remain to be divulged. Fierce Wireless discusses five of the most important questions 5G-watchers are eager to have answered by AT&T in the coming weeks.

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Sprint has upgraded their LTE network in New York City to LTE Advanced, paving the way for their 5G launch next year. While they are not ready to launch 5G yet, the improvements they’re making to the 4G LTE network will make the switch to 5G easier. “Massive MIMO … dramatically improves the capacity of Sprint’s LTE Advanced network with equipment that is software upgradable to 5G,” the carrier said.

“With regards to the 5G plans, we are very well on track,” Saw said at the start of November.

And in the meantime, New York will enjoy the faster speeds that the LTE Advanced network can provide, making it the fastest 4G city in the country.

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Most carriers have focused on using high-band (28GHz) and mid-band (3.5GHz to 6GHz) frequencies for their 5G development, T-Mobile has been going against the grain and focusing on low-band 600MHZ spectrum. They have now completed the world’s first 5G transmission over 600MHz, which could lead the way to faster rollout of their 5G network in the US. The carrier says that its “nationwide low-band spectrum will provide broad 5G coverage for everyone nearly everywhere” in 2020.

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