T-Mobile’s 5G network already offers unmatched 5G speeds and coverage across the U.S., with 98% of the population using some T-Mobile 5G service and over 90% receiving high speeds. Benefiting from 5G Ultra Capacity (5G UC) networks. .
This equates to Uncarrier being #1 in 5G performance in 46 US states. But T-Mobile isn’t satisfied with 90% coverage. The company is steadily working to further expand the footprint of its 5G UC network, bringing the highest speeds to areas previously served only by its low-frequency 5G Extended Range network.
“A massive boost for 5G”
Today, T-Mobile is leveraging some of the new 5G spectrum it acquired in a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auction to bring its 5G UC network to new communities and expand into more congested urban areas. announced that it will increase available bandwidth in some areas.
The most notable boost has been in rural areas, with T-Mobile reporting “tens of millions of [its] 5G customers are immediately New spectrum will come online “in the coming days,” which will improve performance.
Despite having the widest mid-band coverage of any U.S. carrier, T-Mobile’s 5G UC network is primarily limited to populated areas and offers faster 5G speeds. Additional capacity is required to accommodate more customers. Many rural areas have been left out of that expansion and are limited to the slow performance of T-Mobile’s 5G extended range network, which is often not much faster than 4G/LTE service.
“Thanks to years of planning, T-Mobile is now making this spectrum readily available to millions of customers, bringing game-changing ultracapacity 5G to more people and speeds for others. and performance,” said Mike Sievert of T-Mobile. Mobile’s CEO said in the company’s press release. “This type of execution is why T-Mobile is America’s leading new network leader, while ensuring we continue to deliver maximum value to our customers.”
New midrange 5G spectrum for everyone
The secret sauce behind T-Mobile’s vast 5G UC network is that thanks to its 2020 merger with Sprint, it gained early access to 2.5GHz midrange spectrum that can be used for new 5G deployments. This gave “Un-carrier” a significant head start over its competitors. Competitors had to wait until the FCC auctioned off new C-band spectrum just below his 4GHz range before rolling out their own mid-band 5G networks.
Even before taking advantage of the lucrative 2.5GHz frequency set, T-Mobile was already the first carrier to boast 5G coverage in all 50 states. However, this is a low-band 5G network that operates on the 600MHz spectrum, which is enough to light up the 5G indicator on your smartphone, but not enough to deliver the faster download speeds that 5G technology promises. was.
Fortunately, T-Mobile wasted no time and put its 2.5GHz spectrum to good use. By the end of 2021, the new mid-band 5G UC network will cover more than 200 million people, and at the end of last year, it expanded to 300 million people.
Carriers have used some of the high-frequency C-band spectrum used by Verizon and AT&T to boost their 5G UC networks, but that simply adds extra capacity to the densest areas. The backbone of 5G UC networks still operates on 2.5GHz, the frequency band the company recently won at auction and is currently turning on.
It also received licenses to deploy new spectrum almost everywhere in the United States. Meanwhile, his T-Mobile customers in traditionally unserved rural areas will notice the biggest difference when his 5G UC indicator lights up on his phone for the first time. The additional spectrum will be used to increase the capacity and performance of existing 5G UC networks, so we expect all customers to see at least some performance improvement.
In a press release, T-Mobile cited Louisiana as just one example, noting that spectrum from the latest auction “will benefit customers in 92% of Pelican counties.” To put this into perspective, Louisiana ranked 34th in January’s Ookla 5G Market Report, with the state’s median download speed at 84.77 Mbps overall, and for T-Mobile customers. It was 163.33 Mbps. In New Orleans, T-Mobile took top honors for his 5G performance with his 185.55 Mbps, but he still ranked 68th overall in the city. Baton Rouge, which fell to 88th place, had a median 5G download speed of just 110.8Mbps, with no clear winner among the three carriers.
For Louisiana, T-Mobile promises the new spectrum will “immediately improve connectivity for more than 1.7 million people, nearly 500,000 of whom live in rural areas.” In total, 2.2 million people in Pennsylvania are eligible for remediation, of which nearly 1 million live in rural areas.
The new spectrum is expected to cover 80 million people by the time deployment is complete. The first phase will use existing towers to come online over the next few days, covering approximately 60 million customers across approximately 300,000 square miles. For the rest, carriers will need to build new towers to expand their coverage. The carrier hasn’t said exactly when that will be, but given T-Mobile’s track record to date, these towers will likely be up and running by the end of this year, or even sooner. It is expected that this will happen. Some of this 80 million people are already covered by T-Mobile’s 5G UC network and will only benefit from the additional capacity, but T-Mobile has the fastest There are only about 30 million people left to be covered by 5G services. By the time this new spectrum rolls out, nearly the entire population of the United States could be affected.
