Tag: Los Angeles

Can the Super Bowl Support Fans on 5G

It’s almost time for the Los Angeles Rams to take on the Cincinnati Bengals in this year’s Super Bowl and T-Mobile is ready to support the thousands of fans. 

Over the past 18 months T-Mobile engineers have been working hard to add more permanent 5G coverage and capacity to the Los Angeles area. This is not only part of their original plan to cover more than 300 million users with 5G by 2023, but also to ensure fans have a great experience at this year’s biggest football game. 

“The investment we’ve made in LA over the past 18 months is massive!” said Neville Ray, President of Technology at T-Mobile. “This is a powerhouse 5G network with incredible capacity using the most advanced technologies in wireless. And best of all, it’s just going to get even better as we keep building out the #1 fastest 5G network in LA and nationwide.”

That investment was more than $100 million for 5G infrastructure across the city. Now, more than 95 percent of people in Greater Los Angeles are now covered with T-Mobile’s super-fast Ultra Capacity 5G network. This was made possible with the hundreds of upgraded and newly installed 5G macro sites and small cells (nearly 200), as well as 5G upgrades at LAX, and numerous other venues. T-Mobile customers should get blazing fast 5G speeds while traveling around the area, tailgating and sharing their favorite moments at the game.

At SoFi Stadium, where the big game will be held, T-Mobile deployed a brand new state-of-the-art 5G system. This system was upgraded with 100 Gigabit backhaul and with the deployment of Ultra Capacity 5G service, it’s using mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum. The equipment installed gives SoFi the capability equal to nearly 100 traditional macro cell sites! Tests show the speeds have been fast too. During the NFC Championship game on January 30, T-Mobile customers could experience peak download speeds of 1.5 Gbps!

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Verizon’s sneak peek of pre-commercial C-band in LA

Amidst the concerns over 5G’s C-Band spectrum, and cold weather, journalists and analysts went to the streets to test. They received a sneak peek of Verizon’s pre-commercial C-band 5G service in downtown Los Angeles, complete with handsets tuned to the C-band. 

Among these testers was Bill Ho, a principal analyst at 556 Ventures. He later posted on Twitter that he was able to get download speeds of 649 Mbps, with upload of 63 Mbps.

The tests were conducted at an ice-rink within the LA Live entertainment district of downtown and detailed in this article. This is a well trafficked area of LA, a few blocks wide, where they set up a few devices to access the network.

Infrastructure in the area was supplied by Ericsson, and only available to these supplied devices (i.e. Samsung S21, iPhone 12, and iPhone 13).  C-band nodes were often a half a mile away from the test area and still provided broadband speed and performance. Some reporters also used their own phones which would have had access to LTE and mmWave, but not C-band.

Verizon’s intent was to show off the unique power of C-band – specifically on 60Mhz – where on an unencumbered network with few users the speed and capacity are compatible with millimeter wave (mmWave). Though the 3.7 GHz C-band has much farther range. 

Verizon hasn’t provided an exact time for when the commercial C-band service will launch, but reiterated its commitment to cover 100 million people by the end of March. “We’re confident we’ll do that,” a spokesperson said on Friday. 

Now, the real question is whether Verizon can catch up to T-Mobile in mid-band 5G in a way that’s fast enough, and effective enough, so that T-Mobile’s advantage doesn’t significantly hurt Verizon’s business. 

“T-Mobile is building out simply because they’ve got it and they know that they want to extend the competitive gap,” Ho said. From Verizon’s standpoint, they’re moving very fast – and from AT&T’s standpoint, “they’re doing it too, but maybe not as telegraphed as much as Verizon – and that is to limit the gap, or minimize the gap” that T-Mobile has created.

That, in part, is because “in my opinion, everybody is going after enterprise,” Ho added. That said, there are a lot of 5G growth sectors, such as fixed wireless access (FWA) and enterprise, both areas where T-Mobile intends to grow. Verizon has a huge enterprise base, so they need to bring that up to show and minimize any competitive gaps. T-Mobile says they’re two years ahead,” and that’s a snapshot in time.

Once Verizon turns on that C-band, “they kind of minimize that whole argument,” leading to questions as to whether or not T-Mobile’s head-start is indeed two years, Ho added. “It’s really the marketing message that T-Mobile has been saying for a while,” he said. “If Verizon gets it done fast, then they can minimize that marketing message totally.”

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