5G Band Cheat Sheet: Verizon vs AT&T vs Sprint vs T-Mobile vs World

5G was introduced to the world about five years ago, and the United States was one of the countries that led its adoption, especially in the early stages. It was like a gold rush in the Wild West, with each major cell phone company competing to offer the next widest, most consistent, and fastest coverage.

This article explains the important parts of 5G networks and the different types of 5G bands. We also look back at how these bands have given people an early experience of high speed since they were first introduced in his 2019. Learn how 5G works and how these bands affect coverage. Let’s dive in!

5G band

5G is actually three different types of bands, and it’s important to know the differences

Each type of 5G band has its pros and cons, and using all three will give you the best results. In fact, this is one of the main aspects that distinguishes 5G from previous generations, as it allows the use of different frequencies within the band simultaneously. This flexibility makes 5G more adaptable, improving coverage and reliability.

Millimeter wave bands are extremely fast and are the main selling point of this new generation of cellular networks, but they are also the most complex for 5G. To support the incredible speeds of high-band 5G, your phone must come with special parts (including certain antennas). As a result, you can only find more expensive phones that support this top-notch performance that 5G networks boast.

5G bands and their frequency spectrum

Mid-band 5G spectrum:

Low-band 5G spectrum:

Now let’s take a look at which 5G bands each US carrier supports. This is a fairly simplistic representation of the bands covered by these carriers, but overall enough to give you a good idea of ​​where to buy your phone if 5G coverage is important to you. Keep in mind that it provides appearance.

verizon 5g band

n2, n5, n77, n66, n261, n260

verizonThe rollout of mid-band 5G is the biggest upgrade for carrier networks in years, bringing real change and delivering much faster speeds to its target audience.

Historically, verizon has started building its 5G network, focusing exclusively on mmWave technology using the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands. This provided incredible speeds, but millimeter waves did not travel long distances, making them available to only a very few people.

But just recently, in 2022, verizon The C band (mid band) has been significantly expanded. In January 2022, verizon AT&T launched C-band 5G in 46 U.S. cities, compared to AT&T, which launched similar service in just eight cities. The key to C-band’s success is the use of wider coverage and larger 60MHz channels. Since its launch, posts have been posted on Reddit from users impressed by his speeds of over 500Mpbs in many cities.

AT&T 5G Band

n5, n77, n260

After dominating the market with 4G LTE technology, AT&T has been slower to deploy 5G technology than the other two major carriers.

Experiments with mid-band 5G, which is expected to be the backbone of future 5G networks, are just beginning in mid-2022.meanwhile verizon AT&T has announced a major expansion of its mid-band network, but the company has just begun experimenting with towers in the Chicago and New York areas. The company is said to be planning further expansion in late 2022 and further into 2023.

In the early days of 5G, AT&T also became “famous” for confusing users by naming its 4G technology 5G Evolution. This could have been misleading, as a 4G network cannot be rebranded and he calls it 5G. So what AT&T did was upgrade its cell phone towers and add new small cells using his LTE Advanced, which has technologies like 3-way carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, and 256-QAM modulation. These technologies allow for theoretical speed increases of up to 400Mbps. While great for users, it’s still not fast enough to qualify as true 5G.

AT&T also has a mmWave network based on the 39 GHz band (band n260), but like all mmWave technology, this is limited to limited areas in some urban areas.

America vs the world

As you can see, the major U.S. carriers started by pushing mmWave, but their current focus is on expanding their mid-band networks, which is something that European carriers have been working on all along.

Mobile phones that support 5G

additional cost

The first 5G phones started appearing in early 2019, and most modern phones come with some form of 5G support.

The first, and indeed the most affordable, phone to support the new technology was the Moto Z3, which was launched on August 16, 2019. The phone itself didn’t have a built-in 5G modem for him, but he was able to add his 5G connectivity via Moto Mod. , a bulky, $350 snap-on part. verizon5G network only.

The most popular 5G phone models are:

Please note that certain models sold with certain carriers and marketed as 5G may not have the necessary bands to operate 5G with another carrier. As is often the case, verizon While you get an exclusive version of a 5G phone with mmWave support from Big Red, the same phone is available with AT&T. T-mobile mmWave is not supported and typically costs a little less.

Advantages of 5G compared to previous technologies

There are so few users on the 5G network at the moment that you can get truly amazing speeds. verizon‘s network in Chicago can deliver download speeds of 1.3Gbps, which is faster than the near 500Mbps peak download speeds you get with Sprint (although Sprint has broader and more consistent coverage).

Another benefit of 5G is improved management of voice traffic. This means more devices can connect to all towers, no more dropped calls, and much better call quality.

As 5G becomes ubiquitous, with enough bandwidth and lower latency, connected gadgets will begin to emerge. 5G is also often cited as one of the key technologies needed for connected cars, where milliseconds of latency are critical.