T-Mobile has announced its plans for truly nationwide 5G deployment in the United States. In the recent 600 MHz spectrum auction T-Mobile acquired the largest pie (nearly 45%) of the available spectrum by offering a sum of nearly $8 billion. The company won 1,525 licenses and bought around 31 MHz of spectrums in the 600 MHz low-band frequencies. On top of expanding and strengthening its LTE coverage, they will use a portion of its $8 billion of low-band 600 MHz spectrum to deliver 5G coverage from coast to coast.
On top of its nationwide deployment, T-Mobile 5G will enable high bandwidth and massive throughput in urban areas using a combination of mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum. The 600 MHz 5G network will deliver increased radio efficiency, immense numbers of connected devices, lower latency and improved battery life and reliability, all of which, made possible by Mobile 5G. T-Mobile expects to deploy 5G in its low-band 600 MHz spectrum quickly across its existing nationwide macro network, in contrast with its millimeter wave spectrum plans, which would require a number of small cells so massive that providing broad coverage would be impossible.
Beyond vastly improved speeds for mobile devices, T-Mobile expects to see a whole new class of innovative mobile applications and solutions emerge for broad 5G coverage. Along with device and infrastructure partners, T-Mobile will help drive 3GPP certification for 5G in 600 MHz. As 5G standards are defined, chipsets are delivered, and equipment comes to market, T-Mobile will quickly deploy 5G nationwide in a large swath of unused spectrum.
The 5G rollout is expected to begin in 2019 with a target of 2020 for full nationwide coverage.
