T-Mobile is putting its cards on the table. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, which have hidden the extent of their 5G buildouts so far, T-Mobile is launching a short-range 5G network on Friday with coverage maps that show just how far its fast, but limited millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum can go.
The new network is coming to six cities—Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York—with one phone, the $1,299.99 Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. T-Mobile says 5G won’t alter customers’ service plans, which means deprioritization thresholds and hotspot allotments will stay the same as on 4G.
This isn’t a truly “uncarrier” 5G approach. It looks to me more like T-Mobile is trying to fulfill its promises to launch 5G in the first half of 2019 and not to get left behind in the flurry of press releases from its competitors.
Unlike with AT&T and Verizon, millimeter-wave isn’t T-Mobile’s focus. The company owns less mmWave spectrum, in fewer places, than the bigger carriers do. T-Mobile owns an average of 200MHz across 10 major cities, according to Light Reading, while AT&T and Verizon have been touting 400MHz-800MHz bandwidths nationwide.
T-Mobile has been more focused on pushing its “nationwide 5G,” which will rely on lower-band spectrum and have better coverage. However, no devices will be available for it until later this year.
Think of T-Mobile’s 5G strategy as a cake. Most of the cake is either low-band or, if the company is allowed to merge with Sprint, mid-band. Millimeter-wave is just the frosting for T-Mobile, and this launch is just them letting you lick the spoon while the rest of the cake is in the oven.
Less spectrum means less of the crazy gigabit-plus speeds we saw when testing Verizon and AT&T. In our preliminary tests with T-Mobile in Manhattan, we saw speeds more like 500Mbps. But T-Mobile is backing up its slimmer mmWave portfolio with a unique twist: the carrier says it will be able to combine LTE and mmWave signals to reach higher speeds. This combo is on AT&T’s and Verizon’s roadmaps as well, but neither carrier has implemented it yet.
T-Mobile is also currently trying to merge with Sprint, which launched its own 5G network a few weeks ago. Sprint uses ‘mid-band’ spectrum, which has range and speeds in between millimeter wave and low-band. 14 states are now suing to prevent the merger from happening, with a court date currently set for October.
Atlanta
Cleveland
Dallas
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
New York
Telling the Whole Truth About mmWave
The most interesting thing about T-Mobile’s announcement is the maps. In Chicago and Minneapolis, its first two 5G cities, Verizon has only given lists of neighborhoods, although I’ve worked to make maps of where I’ve found the technology. AT&T claims service in 19 cities but won’t publicly say where. In Dallas, we only saw it outside AT&T’s headquarters and in one park.
In New York, T-Mobile’s millimeter-wave covers splotchy parts of Midtown and Downtown Manhattan, East Harlem, and a corridor down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. What’s striking is how uneven it is block-by -block,, because right now the base stations only extend their coverage for about two blocks. Considering that, T-Mobile has done an admirable job here.
(T-Mobile has enough cell sites in Midtown Manhattan to provide decent millimeter-wave coverage. Source: Cellmapper.net)
If you follow the Third Avenue corrdor in Manhattan, there’s coverage for most of five miles; that’s far more than Verizon has been able to deliver in Chicago and Minneapolis. The focus in LA and Atlanta are also in patches of the downtown area, although not as extensive as in New York.
Note that right now, mmWave only works outside; even a glass window knocks mmWave signal down by 65-70 percent in our testing.
The limitations of mmWave make the Cleveland map really interesting. In Cleveland, T-Mobile is serving hotspots where people may be spending a lot of time outside. There are a few blocks around the Cleveland Clinic, the campus of Cuyahoga Community College, Progressive Field where the Cleveland Indians play, and areas around Case Western Reserve University. That buildout seems smart.
The Dallas map is perplexing. It seems to involve mostly odd little chunks of streets that aren’t particularly popular, for instance near highway overpasses and in random neighborhoods, although the Baylor University Medical Center is also covered. Similarly in Las Vegas, the network appears to cover some desolate parking lots in an industrial area next to the freeway, although at least it also hits parts of downtown and near the convention center.
We’ll have some real tests of T-Mobile’s 5G network in New York soon, but in the meantime follow our monthly Race to 5G updates to track all four carriers’ 5G rollout progress.