T-Mobile CEO says Verizon’s 5G plan is ‘fake,’ ‘clueless,’ and ‘dead in the water’

AT&T is “lying, confusing people”

T-Mobile CEO John Legere took something of a victory lap this afternoon, using a call with investors to trash talk his rivals’ 5G plans now that T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint has federal approval. Legere called Verizon “dead in the water without a strategy” and said AT&T has been “lying” and “confusing” customers about its deployment.

Legere laid out a coherent and entertaining (and if you’re his competitors, insulting) vision of the current state of 5G strategies while on the call. Of course, it’s all premised on the idea that T-Mobile, once combined with Sprint, has the one true vision for 5G, which is more than debatable. But his explanation isn’t necessarily wrong, either.

The TL;DR is that Legere believes 5G requires low-band, mid-band, and high-band spectrum in order to work, and the combined T-Mobile is the only carrier that has access to all that.

AT&T and Verizon both have high-band (millimeter wave, or mmWave) spectrum, which delivers extremely fast speeds, but it’s only useful at very short ranges. They also both have low-band spectrum, which is what’s already used for LTE. Mid-band spectrum, which Sprint has, can deliver somewhat faster speeds at somewhat longer distances, offering T-Mobile more flexibility.

LEGERE’S BREAKDOWN IS PREMISED ON MID-BAND, WHICH ONLY SPRINT HAS, BEING CRITICAL TO 5G

Verizon has focused its 5G talk on the deployment of mmWave, and Legere says that a “mmWave-only strategy ... will not work” because it’ll cost too much. AT&T has emphasized that it’s working on upgrading its LTE network to transform it into 5G service (albeit, while misleading customers in the process through confusing branding). Legere says those upgrades are the right approach, but that AT&T has “a big hole” in its plan because of the lack of mid-band.

Whether mid-band is truly necessary for 5G is very much up for debate — Sprint, which owns mid-band spectrum, has described itself as mostly doomed when it comes to 5G because that’s all it has to rely on. T-Mobile’s ability to combine that spectrum with other offerings is why Legere is leaning back and ripping apart his rivals.

AT&T isn’t taking his criticism particularly seriously. “Oh look, Legere is back. They were last to 5G, but he’s already the expert,” an AT&T spokesperson told The Verge. We’ve reached out to Verizon for comment as well.

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all started rolling out their 5G networks this year, though so far availability is extremely limited, to the point where it’d be a waste of money to buy a 5G device, potentially even if you lived in one of the few areas where there is availability. Deployment is expected to increase significantly over the next year, particularly as carriers begin to step up their 5G rollouts outside of the very limited mmWave deployments we’ve see now.

T-MOBILE STILL HAS TO WAIT FOR THE DEAL TO CLOSE BEFORE USING SPRINT’S SPECTRUM

It’ll be at least a couple months before T-Mobile can start to do anything with Sprint’s assets, though. The deal needs time to close, and several states still have lawsuits open against the deal. The settlement proposed today with the DOJ could help to resolve some of those issues, but states like California may wish to see even more concessions.

T-Mobile and Sprint reached a deal to have their merger approved by the Department of Justice earlier today. The deal requires the combined company to sell off a number of assets to Dish, including wireless spectrum and prepaid wireless brands like Boost Mobile, and for the company to let Dish piggyback on its network for up to seven years.

The merger had been pending for more than a year while it underwent review. The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger in May, but the Justice Department maintained concerns that allowing the two companies to combine would harm competition in the wireless market, as it would remove the two underdogs and create a third giant that’s relatively equally matched to competitors AT&T and Verizon.

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The IRREGULATORS won their first round against the FCC for ripping off the American taxpayers and putting us all at risk

By B.N. Frank

Free Book Explains How Americans Have Become Powerless Against Telecom Companies

In June, Bruce Kushnick and The IRREGULATORS won their first round against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for ripping off the American taxpayers and putting us all at risk.

Thanks to Ecological Options Network for reminding everyone about the IRREGULATORS’ free e-Book offer as well as an update on this legal case in their blog:

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The Irregulators, a team of senior telecom experts, are exposing in court the illegal accounting scheme to replace wired networks with wireless and make us pay for it!

The Background

1. Verizon, AT&T and other companies have illegally been using the construction budgets of the copper wireline-based (landlines) state telecommunications utilities to build out their wireless networks.

• Local phone customers have been charged inflated rates that have paid to help telecom companies build their networks – so that rate payers have been unknowingly subsidizing wireless services at the detriment of wired networks.  Landlines offer better sound quality and more reliability in emergencies such as fires and storms and are essential service for elders.  Landlines do not have the health and cyber risks of wireless communications.
• If these “cross subsidies” were removed – or repaid – then 5G would not be profitable.
• This shell game has given wireless companies enormous profits and has shown artificial losses for wired services. This has allowed telecoms to classify wired networks as unprofitable, to justify eliminating the superior copper-wired service and to force us into entirely wireless service!
• The telecoms have already charged rate payers (at thousands of dollars/line over two decades), to develop a fiber optic service, but didn’t deliver it to us as promised. Now they are attempting to charge us again for it but only giving us wireless service.
• Almost all these inaccurate and misleading financial practices were enabled by the FCC accounting rules.
• Exposing these “cross subsidies” and requiring the FCC to demand that telecom carriers fix them to accurately reflect the actual costs associated with each respective technology, could be a game changer.
• To add insult to injury, the companies have dumped billions per state of their ‘corporate operations expenses’ that should never have been charged. This is the executive pay, lobbyists, lawyers, golf tournaments and the corporate jets — and worse, these are the lawyers, lobbyists that are working to force 5G on us– we’re paying them extra to harm us!

Warnings about widespread 5G deployment have come from:

1. Security experts
2. Meteorologists, NASA, NOAA and the U.S. Navy
3. Doctors and scientists (see 1, 2, 3)
4. Utility companies

The Telecom Industry doesn’t even have evidence that 5G is safe! 

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AT&T Battling Class Action Lawsuits From Investors As Well As Sprint. More Predicted by AT&T

By B.N. Frank

AT&T is one of many telecoms who have been warning their investors – but not the public – that they may eventually be held liable for harm caused by their products and transmitting infrastructure (i.e. cell towers).

Despite this, they continue to install 5G wireless throughout the U.S. (see 1, 2) even though telecom industry representatives have provided no scientific evidence that it’s safe, plenty of research already proves it isn’t, and an increasing number of credible sources are opposed to installation for a variety of reasons in addition to biological and environmental risks (see 1, 2, 3).

From SurvivalUpdate:

1. Sprint versus AT&T

In February 2019, competitor telecom heavyweight Sprint took legal exception to AT&T’s 5G E advertising campaign, calling it false and misleading “by deceiving customers to believe that its 4G LTE Advanced network is actually 5G.”

The plaintiffs allege that AT&T’s false claims about 5G E (which stands for 5G Evolution) are “causing irreparable damage to its own 5G network investment” by creating consumer perception that AT&T is rolling out new technologies that are more advanced than those of their rivals.

[…]

Consumer confusion over existing 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) and AT&T’s fanciful 5G E, according to Sprint, will cause “significant lost sales” because “AT&T’s deception guts Sprint’s opportunity to reap the full commercial benefits of Sprint’s 5G network launch that it has been developing for years at enormous expense.”

2. Investors versus AT&T

Two different groups of investors have filed class-action lawsuits against AT&T which charge that the international telecom misled them about the ability of DirecTV Now to grow its market and raise the corporation’s stock value. Pomerantz LLP law firm filed on behalf of an investor group while Klein Law Firm is representing a shareholder member class.

At that time, AT&T promised customers and investors alike that prices for DirecTV Now (a subscription streaming TV service) would plummet. That didn’t happen and the members of one class action lawsuit are claiming that AT&T purposely misled everyone.

AT&T canceled its existing streaming bundles and raised fees for new bundles. Later, AT&T reintroduced the older bundles and charged higher prices for them.

The sour investors further claim that AT&T “touted false and misleading financial results, trends, and metrics and omitted material facts rendering those financial results, trends, and metrics materially misleading.”

267,000 customers abandoned DirecTV Now in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2018 even as AT&T continued to issue false and misleading information with the express purpose of hiding their financial loss.

It’s all very yucky. 


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FCC names winners of $2.7 billion 24-28GHz millimeter wave auctions

Millimeter wave spectrum will deliver the fastest version of 5G services, and after six months of semi-secretive auctions, the Federal Communications Commission has finally announced the winners of 28GHz and 24GHz U.S. spectrum. The commission raised over $2.7 billion across the auctions, and the winners were mostly major players in the telecom industry: AT&T bid over $982 million for 831 24GHz licenses, T-Mobile bid $803 million for 1,346 24GHz licenses, and Verizon bid $505 million for 1,066 28GHz licenses.

Almost 60 bidders preregistered for the 24GHz auction, including cable companies Cox and Frontier, as well as a variety of smaller regional carriers. Verizon and AT&T notably used the auctions to augment their prior millimeter wave holdings purchased from other companies, enabling them to expand upon the early 5G services tested and launched on those frequencies. T-Mobile won enough 24GHz licenses to establish itself with millimeter wave towers, after having previously focused almost exclusively on a strategy of using low-frequency and midband holdings for 5G.

Recognizing the spectrum’s potential, the FCC offered significant discounts for small and rural bidders to encourage competition. But the most notable winning bidder after the big three carriers was U.S. Cellular, which won 590 licenses for $254 million.

Though the FCC announced a $702 million haul for 28GHz spectrum in late January, and proceeds of just under $2 billion from its first phase of 24GHz bidding, a second and final “assignment phase” pushed the latter to $2.024 billion as of its close late on May 28. The commission’s bidding process dragged each auction out for over two months, and with gaps between auctions bidders’ identities have remained secret since last November.

Auction participants fought for geography-specific rights to millimeter wave spectrum, such that one carrier could buy rights to 24GHz spectrum in central Utah and another might have already won 28GHz spectrum in the same area. While the two aren’t identical, they’re very similar, and either will enable a carrier to deliver multi-gigabit data rates with extremely low latencies — assuming the carrier is willing to install many “small cell” radios within an area to distribute the high-speed but short-distance millimeter wave signals.

Millimeter wave spectrum was considered all but useless for consumer devices several years ago, as the hardware necessary to send and receive millimeter wave signals tended to be satellite dish- or oven-sized. But engineers saw potential in the spectrum and successfully shrunk millimeter wave hardwareinto pocketable components, the first of which are now available in Netgear’s Nighthawk 5G Hotspot, Motorola’s 5G Moto Mod, and Samsung’s Galaxy S10 5G phone.

In the absence of millimeter wave holdings or hardware, some carriers have opted to launch 5G on non-millimeter wave “sub-6GHz” frequencies that are likely to be slower, but with the ability to travel longer distances. U.S. carriers plan to use both types of frequencies but to start with millimeter wave, while other carriers will generally start with sub-6GHz frequencies and then add millimeter wave when it becomes locally available.

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The stars, G5 cell towers, and electromagnetic radiation exposure

Our ancestors navigated by the stars. Today most of us need a cell phone to know where we are going. That’s sobering. We are out of touch. That’s not to say I am going to be able to navigate by stars anytime soon, but I still like the directions of “turn at this barn”, or “the lake on the left”. And I like maps. They tell a story and give me a visual which does not change.

What I like may be changed forever by new technology. G5 cell service – promised by Verizon, ATT, TMobile and Virgin – speeds up the world and adds a lot of towers, up to 800,000 new towers. That’s a lot of cell coverage. The big companies, Verizon and ATT, already offer G5 service in some urban areas and the companies are promising to bring it to the rural north. My son will be able to stream games, movies, and all more quickly while sitting on the couch. How fabulous is that?

Well, I think it’s a bad idea. G5 adds to our world another level, a higher level of electromagnetic radiation exposure, which is damaging not only to our health but to the world we live in. This service requires lots of new towers, closer together – in some places, once every l2 houses. In short, lots of money for the companies and possibly lots of risk. Add to that the speed in which this is to be deployed, without much of a look at the environmental and cultural impacts, and the problems compound.

Take the birds for example. There used to be millions of them. Fields full of geese, ducks, migratory birds, lakes echoing the sounds of these relatives. Take a good look. They are no more. Bird populations are plummeting quickly in North America – a 40% decline. In May, I traveled to New York City. Once the pigeons would make you crazy. Today there are none. Really, there are no birds. Maybe that’s a result of the insect Armageddon, since we have 50% or more loss in bugs. And birds eat bugs. Maybe it’s because young people do not care for pigeons like their elders who fed them. Maybe it’s because they commit mass suicide, or die offs. Or maybe it’s the 5G which now serves Manhattan.

It’s probably a combination of all. But what if we could roll back one of those, or maybe just have 5G Free Zones, like a few places where instant messaging and streaming doesn’t work. It turns out a number of cities – from Geneva Switzerland (the Swiss are definitely some technology people) to Petaluma, California – are opposing or stopping 5G installations. A federal lawsuit filed by 19 Native nations and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asks for the same questions. Tribes, including the Seminole, Blackfeet, Rosebud Lakota, Crow Creek Dakota and others are concerned about the number of cell towers required for 5G and their impact on sacred sites, and traditional territories, while others are concerned about the health impact.

To be more specific, according to the legal case filed by the tribal governments and the NRDC (Case No. 18-1129, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit), “Infrastructure supporting over 400,000,000 cellular telephones is perhaps the United States’ largest interconnected engineering structure. Existing technology uses large, widely-spaced towers. Carriers envision new networks with smaller towers, perhaps fifty feet tall, placed much closer together, creating smaller area coverage for each cell than existing technology. The FCC [Federal Communications Commission] expects mobile operators to build 55,000 new cell sites in the near term.”

That’s a lot of cell towers. We will be paying for those for sure. Maybe we need to look at where those would go. It turns out this will impact many Indigenous peoples. Native nations have tribal lands, sacred sites and cultural areas outside of present reservation boundaries. That’s, in part, why there is a formal consultation process. It also has to do with legal trust responsibility. The FCC, in fast tracking approval for the 5G network infrastructure, has determined that complying with federal regulations like the National Historic Preservation Act isn’t necessary. As the complaint notes, “The FCC’s concludes that Section 106 consultation is without serious value.” That is a pretty large problem for Native people.

Other groups, particularly environmental groups, are concerned about the health impacts of the 5G network on the natural world. Studies looking at the impact of electromagnetic pollution on wildlife have raised concern. One scientific review notes, “Phone masts located in their living areas are irradiating continuously some species that could suffer long-term effects, like reduction of their natural defenses, deterioration of their health, problems in reproduction and reduction of their useful territory through habitat deterioration.” (Electromagnetic pollution from phone masts. Effects on wildlife, by Alfonso Balmori. 2009)

The research has been underway for awhile, but I was too busy streaming my Netflix to read much. In September of 2017, more than 180 scientists and doctors from 35 countries, recommended a moratorium on the roll-out of the fifth generation, 5G, for telecommunication until potential hazards for human health and the environment are fully investigated by scientists. The scientists want to make sure that the research is conducted independent from industry or corporate influence.

This is the skinny: 5G means a lot more cell towers, on top of the 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, etc. for telecommunications already in place. While Verizon continues to eat up more of my budget, part of it is that 5G will require many more antennas, with a full-scale implementation resulting in antennas every 10 to 12 houses in urban areas. It means we all get zapped, you will not be able to avoid exposure. The studies show that there are increased cancer risks, cellular risk, genetic damages and a bunch of other lousy stuff.
Add to that “10 to 20 billion connections” (to refrigerators, washing machines, surveillance cameras, self-driving cars and buses, etc.) all parts of the “Internet of Things.” That’s the same internet that I love so dearly, from smart phones to smart grid. So, what am I thinking? Take your eyes off that cell phone, or maybe it’s your IPAD, and just take a look around and breathe.

We need to rethink just blindly adopting technology for convenience. If we want this new faster connection, what we may want is more expensive but less damaging: a fiber optic system to wires (even faster), not waves going through living bodies. It’s ok for machines but not biology.

“In 2012, the General Accountability Office found that the existing standards may not reflect current knowledge and recommended that the FCC formally reassess its standards. The FCC’s standards address only one aspect of potential harm from electromagnetic radiation – heat. The current standards do not address other ways in which exposure to increasing electromagnetic radiation from wireless communications can harm human health, as well as the natural systems around us on which all life depends.” (5G and the FCC: 10 Reasons Why You Should Care by Sharon Buccino. 2019)

The concern is a risk of cancer, particularly in heart and brain cells, according to the National Toxicology Program in a 2018 study. I think that most of us know that intuitively you cannot get zapped continuously without consequence. I think that Genie should stay in the bottle for a few years. While you can no longer see the stars in many places, where I live they are clearly in sight. They remind me of my ancestors, the air, and the navigation tools needed for the time ahead.

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These are the cities with 5G or getting 5G in 2019

5G will revolutionize the way we use the Internet, bringing high-speed data everywhere, creating smart cities, and even replacing home Internet connections. That’s what the industry says, anyway. But when is 5G coming to your city?

What Is 5G?

Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are racing to get 5G on your phone and in your home. But what is 5G, and how is it different from 4G LTE?

5G is the wireless standard that will replace 4G LTE. It can theoretically reach speeds up to 10 gigabits per second, which is very fast—but 20 Gbps is the minimum target. To put things into perspective, that could theoretically be a hundred times as fast a 4G LTE connection, much faster than a ten megabits per second wired connection, and comparable to the speeds that people get with wired fiber connections.

And even though it’s a wireless connection, 5G has a much lower latency than the wired connection you have at home. According to the FCC, fiber connections tend to have a 17-millisecond delay, and cable Internet connections tend to have a latency of about 28 milliseconds. But AT&T claims that their 5G connections have a delay between 9 and 12 milliseconds. That shortened delay time makes streaming, downloading, gaming, and video chatting much more reliable.

RELATED: What Is 5G, and How Fast Will It Be?

What Cities Already Have 5G?

AT&T is blue, T-Mobile is magenta, and Verizon is red. MapCustomizer

Service providers have been testing 5G in the real world to see how it works. Plus, they’re racing to get your money. As a result, there are already some cities that have 5G connections. If you happen to live in one of these cities, you’ll want to keep in mind that you can’t really use mobile 5G connections without a compatible phone, so you’ll have to wait a few months before 5G products start hitting the market.

These US cities have 5G right now, as of January 17, 2019:

Verizon (Home internet service):

• Los Angeles, CA
• Sacramento, CA
• Indianapolis, IN
• Houston, TX

AT&T:

• Jacksonville, FL
• Atlanta, GA
• Indianapolis, IN
• Louisville, KY
• New Orleans, LA
• Charlotte, NC
• Raleigh, NC
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Dallas, TX
• Houston, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Waco, TX

T-Mobile:

• Los Angeles, CA
• Las Vegas, NV
• New York, NY
• Dallas, TX
• Claimed that they’d bring 5G to 26 other unspecified cities in 2018.

Sprint:

• Sprint is set to merge with T-Mobile. They’ve been helping T-Mobile build their 5G network.

Which Cities Will Get 5G in 2019?

AT&T is blue, Sprint is yellow, and Verizon is red. 

Nationwide coverage won’t be arriving in 2019, but all the big US cellular carriers have announced plans to roll out 5G in more cities this year.

These cities will get 5G sometime in 2019, according to the cellular carriers:

AT&T:

• San Jose, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• San Diego, CA
• Orlando, FL
• Las Vegas, NV
• Nashville, TN
• San Antonio, TX
• Plans to have nationwide coverage by 2020.

Verizon: (These aren’t officially confirmed, but Verizon ran trial 5G networks in the following cities and has already launched 5G service in other cities it ran trial networks in, so they’re our best guess.)

• Denver, CO
• Washington D.C.
• Miami, FL
• Atlanta, GA
• Brockton, MA
• Ann Arbor, M
• Bernardsville, NJ
• Dallas, TX
• Seattle, WA

T-Mobile:

• Plans to provide coverage to 2/3 of America by 2021, but hasn’t specified which cities will have T-Mobile 5G in 2019. Since they’re set to merge with Sprint, they’ll probably gain all of the 5G networks that Sprint is building in 2019.

Sprint:

• Phoenix, AZ
• Los Angeles, CA
• Washington D.C.
• Atlanta, GA
• Chicago, IL
• Kansas City, MI
• New York, NY
• Dallas, TX
• Houston, TX

There’s a good chance you don’t live in one of these cities, even if you live in the US. That’s why we don’t recommend buying a 5G phone in 2019. If you do live in a 5G city and you’re excited about new technology, you might want to disregard our advice and be an early adopter anyway. But expect some issues with those first-generation phones—and don’t count on Apple’s next iPhone supporting 5G, either.

RELATED: Why You Shouldn’t Buy A 5G Phone In 2019

How Will Companies Bring 5G To Your City?

Wireless companies will install transmitters all over a city, with about 150-250 meters between each transmitter. These dense networks will ensure that phones and homes maintain a fast, low-latency Internet connection. These networks will also be great for mobile hotspots, and AT&T is already offering 5G mobile hotspots to select businesses and consumers.

You can’t get a 5G phone yet, but service providers are racing to get them on the shelves. The first 5G phone will be  Samsung plans to release a 5G phone with Verizon and AT&T in the next few months. T-Mobile and Sprint (which are planning to merge) have been working with Nokia, but they haven’t specified a release date for a 5G-ready cellphone.

The only service provider that’s offering home 5G right now is Verizon, but you have to live in the right city. AT&T isn’t offering home 5G yet (although you could use their mobile hotspot service in your home), but they’re probably planning to offer home 5G to their existing home Internet customers.

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https://www.howtogeek.com/401900/what-us-cities-will-get-5g-in-2019/

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AT&T expands mobile 5G rollout with seven new cities, total rises to 19

Verizon may have been getting buzz for turning on its mobile 5G network last week in Chicago and Minneapolis, but AT&T isn’t letting it keep the spotlight for long.

On Tuesday the nation’s second-largest network announced that it has started turning on its mobile 5G network in “parts” of seven more cities: Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose.

With the seven new areas, AT&T ups its mobile 5G city count to 19, a decent headstart on coverage compared to its rivals. Unlike Verizon, however, users in these areas are currently not able to use any 5G phones on the new network.

So far AT&T only offers one 5G device, the Netgear Nighthawk 5G mobile WiFi hotspot. Like the other carriers it will offer Samsung’s new Galaxy S10 5G, but that device won’t come to the carrier until later this spring.

AT&T promises a second 5G Samsung phone will arrive later in the year.

Verizon currently offers a “mod” accessory that will turn last year’s Moto Z3 into a 5G phone. It will also be the first to offer the Galaxy S10 5G. Noted phone leaker Evan Blass recently tweeted that Verizon will get that Galaxy on May 16.

S10.5G.VZW.05.16

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) April 3, 2019

Sprint, which turns on its 5G network in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Kansas City in May, will launch with LG’s new V50 ThinQ 5G.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile will launch a 5G network in the first half of the year as well, but it has yet to announce exact timing or launch cities.

Verizon 5G: Verizon turns on mobile 5G network ahead of schedule in Chicago and Minneapolis

T-Mobile 5G: After report of delay, T-Mobile says its 5G network plans are still on track

Sprint 5G: Sprint’s 5G network will go live this May in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Kansas City

Unlike the “5G E” logo that is increasingly appearing on more 4G LTE AT&T phones, including recent Galaxys and iPhones, this new network is based on what is accepted as actual 5G, complete with  the promised faster speeds and lower latency, the latter a measure of network responsiveness.

Last December, AT&T turned on mobile 5G in its first 12 cities, though the company has yet to elaborate on if it will be changing its 5G pricing. When it launched in December it charged $70 per month for 15GB of 5G hotspot data.

Verizon, meanwhile, is charging an additional $10 for 5G access for phones, assuming you have one of its latest unlimited data plans. The carrier is also waiving the fee for the first three months as it builds out its new network.

Why you will want to wait

As with AT&T’s first dozen cities, and the new networks from Verizon and T-Mobile, AT&T’s current 5G network is based off a technology known in industry jargon as “mmWave,” or millimeter wave. While this network promises super fast speeds, coverage will be much more limited, particularly at launch.

Verizon’s mmWave network, for example, is only in a handful of locations in Chicago and Minneapolis and AT&T is making it clear that today’s launch will only have 5G live in “parts” of its own new cities.

A second 5G technology, known as “sub-6,” will be rolled out by AT&T later this year and should provide a much larger, more consistent coverage area and can work in tandem with today’s mmWave network.

AT&T calls mmWave “5G+” for its faster speeds, referring to its larger “sub-6” network as simply “5G.”

Samsung Galaxy S10 5G , Galaxy S10+, Samsung Galaxy S10, and Galaxy S10E. With a 6.7-inch screen and four rear cameras, the S10 5G is the largest of the new S10 line and Samsung’s first 5G Galaxy S phone. (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USAT)The first phones and devices, such as that Galaxy S10 5G, only will be capable of connecting to the mmWave 5G network. They lack the necessary chip to tap into the larger “sub-6” network that is coming and prevent you from getting the full 5G experience.

AT&T’s second Samsung 5G phone that is due out later this year will, however, support both mmWave and sub-6 making it, for most people, the likely first 5G phone worth to wait for.

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/09/at-t-expands-5-g-rollout-seven-new-cities-total-rises-19/3409787002/

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Millimeter-wave 5G will never scale beyond dense urban areas, T-Mobile says

T-Mobile CTO says 5G's high-frequency spectrum won't cover rural America.

5G mobile networks have started arriving but only in very limited areas and amidst misleading claims by wireless carriers.

While all four major nationwide carriers in the United States have overhyped 5G to varying degrees, T-Mobile today made a notable admission about 5G's key limitation. T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray wrote in a blog post that millimeter-wave spectrum used for 5G "will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments." That would seem to rule out the possibility of 5G's fastest speeds reaching rural areas or perhaps even suburbs.

Ray made his point with this GIF, apparently showing that millimeter-wave frequencies are immediately blocked by a door closing halfway while the lower 600MHz signal is unaffected:

High frequency, small coverage area

With 4G, carriers prioritized so-called "beachfront spectrum" below 1GHz in order to cover the entire US, both rural areas and cities.

5G networks will use both low and high frequencies, but they're supposed to offer their highest speeds on millimeter waves. Millimeter-wave spectrum is usually defined to include frequencies between 30GHz and 300GHz. But in the context of 5G, carriers and regulators have generally targeted frequencies between 24GHz and 90GHz. T-Mobile's high-frequency spectrum includes licenses in the 28GHz and 39GHz bands.

Millimeter waves generally haven't been used in cellular networks because they don't travel far and are easily blocked by walls and other obstacles. This has led us to wonder how extensive higher-speed 5G deployments will be outside major cities, and now T-Mobile's top technology official is saying explicitly that millimeter-wave 5G deployments will just be for "small pockets" of highly populated areas.

Ray wrote his blog post primarily to complain about AT&T and Verizon claiming to be the first carriers to offer 5G, so his statement about high-frequency limitations was made partly to explain why T-Mobile hasn't yet launched 5G. (There's also the small matter of there not being any 5G phones in the market aside from a Motorola phone sold by Verizon that requires a hardware attachment to access 5G.)

"Verizon's mmWave-only 5G plan is only for the few. And it will never reach rural America," Ray wrote. Ray pointed out that early reviewers of Verizon's small 5G launch had trouble finding a signal.

FURTHER READING

In Verizon 5G launch city, reviewers have trouble even finding a signal

"Some of this is physics—millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum has great potential in terms of speed and capacity, but it doesn't travel far from the cell site and doesn't penetrate materials at all," Ray continued. "It will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments."

The 5G industry standard was designed to make higher frequencies viable in cellular networks with improved beamforming and massive MIMO technology. The 5G industry standard works on everything from sub-1GHz to millimeter-wave frequencies, but spectrum "[a]bove 6GHz is needed to meet the ultra-high broadband speeds envisioned for 5G. Currently, the 26GHz and/or 28GHz bands have the most international support in this range," the GSMA mobile industry group said in a white paper in November 2018.

GSMA called the use of spectrum above 24GHz "vital" for high-speed 5G. This is largely because of the sheer amount of unused spectrum in higher bands—it's much harder to find large unused blocks of spectrum below 1GHz.

“A very small footprint”

T-Mobile intends to use millimeter-wave spectrum to provide "massive capacity over a very small footprint," Ray wrote today. "It holds big promise for speed and capacity in dense urban areas and venues where large numbers of people gather." But low- and mid-band spectrum will still be needed to cover wider areas with 5G, he wrote.

Ray criticized Verizon for "roll[ing] out technology that is nowhere near ready for primetime." He also criticized AT&T for relabeling 4G as "5G E" and for rolling out 5G in some cities without selling any actual 5G phones.

"I have the exact same 5G mmWave network equipment and software that AT&T and Verizon do, and there's no way we would launch this for customers right now," he wrote.

The 5G standard calls for download speeds of 20Gbps and 1ms latency. One Verizon 5G speed test in Chicago found download speeds of 762Mbps and latency of 19ms. But Verizon's 5G coverage in Chicago and Minneapolis, its two launch cities, is hard to find.

T-Mobile over-hypes 5G, too

Despite Ray's realism about the limitations of millimeter-wave signals, T-Mobile hasn't shied away from exaggerating the benefits of 5G. CEO John Legere began a recent blog post by complaining that "there is so damn much noise and misinformation about 5G in the marketplace that it's virtually impossible to separate truth from BS."

But in the very next paragraph, Legere claimed that 5G "is the most transformative technology of our lifetime" while providing no evidence to support that grand statement.

T-Mobile has also claimed that it can only build a robust nationwide 5G network if the government lets it buy Sprint, even though the companies' own previous statements about their 5G plans contradicted those claims.

Ray's blog post once again made this merger-related claim, even as recent reports suggest that US regulators are not convinced. Ray argued that T-Mobile and Sprint together will make "a broad and deep truly nationwide 5G network" using a mix of low-band, mid-band, and high-band spectrum.

While Verizon is charging an extra $10 a month for 5G, Ray promised that T-Mobile "won't charge our customers more for 5G, while Verizon and AT&T continue to jack up prices."

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