It’s 2019. Do you know where your 5G is?
If you’re lucky, it may already be in your town – or in parts of it anyway. And 5G will be more broadly available as the year progresses.
Late last year Verizon (News - Alert) rolled out 5G-based fixed broadband service in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. And AT&T last month did a soft launch of 5G in several places.
But only the businesses that AT&T (News - Alert) offered 5G-capable mobile hotspots could connect to the networks in parts of Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Raleigh, San Antonio, and Waco. And those businesses that accepted AT&T’s free 5G trial offer were only offered “peak theoretical speeds of 1.2 Gbps.”
AT&T plans to make the 5G hotspot endpoints and related services more broadly available in a few months. And together with Samsung (News - Alert), AT&T also will deliver 5G-capable smartphones and services starting the first half of this year.
Sprint last month indicated Atlanta will be one of its first 5G markets. It plans to launch “Sprint (News - Alert) 5G” service there in the first half of this year. In a more detailed press release earlier last year, Sprint listed Atlanta along with Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., as the cities in which it was making Massive MIMO investments, which it said would deliver “5G-like capabilities.”
CES next week in Las Vegas will likely include a lot of 5G news and updates. In fact, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg (News - Alert) will deliver a CES keynote about 5G.
“5G networks will be 100 times faster and five times more responsive than today, with an extremely high data rate and low latency - transforming industries and providing endless possibilities for new services and applications,” the Consumer Technology Association noted.
Edited by Maurice Nagle