Dive Brief:
- Sprint announced it is building out its 5G service in six cities this year. Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles will experience 5G-like capabilities in April, and later in the year service will expand to Atlanta, Houston and Washington, DC.
- T-Mobile is also building out 5G service this year, for 30 cities, the company said in a press release. Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York will experience it first.
- Although both companies are building the 5G infrastructure in the selected cities this year, customers will not be able to fully access the upgraded service until next year.
Dive Insight:
Communications companies are scrambling to beat each other at the upgrade game, and so far 2018 seems to be the year interest in and work on 5G explodes. Verizon and AT&T have been executing their own build-outs and tests in select cities, with promises of officially launching the service this year instead of in 2019.
T-Mobile touts its 5G solutions as better than what it calls "the Duopoly" because it "works on actual smartphones — not nomadic 'pucks' or fixed routers." It boasts of putting customers and their mobile device experiences first with 5G, while also paving the way for new IoT experiences and smart cities solutions. The network upgrades are expected to improve customers' connectivity speeds and device battery life.
Sprint says that during its infrastructure build-out, the select cities will begin to experience 5G-like capabilities, including faster data speeds and greater capacity. It's installing Massive MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antenna technology in the six cities, which Sprint says will offer 10 times the capacity of current LTE systems. “Massive MIMO is a game-changer," said John Saw, Sprint Chief Technology Officer in a statement.
