T-Mobile has launched mid-band 5G service to 81 more communities. The carrier now offers mid-band 2.5 GHz services in 89 cities and towns. The carrier says that its mid-band service offers downloads as fast as 1 Gbps and average speeds of approximately 300 Mbps. The company gained access to significant amounts of mid-band spectrum with its acquisition of Sprint.
In April, shortly after the merger with Sprint was announced, T-Mobile announced it had made mid-band 5G service available in New York City and Philadelphia. Soon after, the company launched mid-band service in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. According to a press release, T-Mobile is on track to light up 1,000 sites per month with mid-band 5G.
Today’s announcement enters a large number of smaller communities into the mix. In all, T-Mobile now offers mid-band 5G services in the District of Columbia and California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
T-Mobile previously launched 5G service nationwide using low-band spectrum, which supports excellent coverage but at lower speeds. According to the company, that network covers more than 250 million people in a 1.3 million square mile footprint.
In a July blog post, T-Mobile President of Technology Neville Ray referred to the carrier’s layer cake approach which employs three approaches to 5G. The carrier uses low-frequency/low-bandwidth for cover, high-frequency mmWave for peak speeds and the mid-band for a tradeoff between the two.
Joan Engebretson contributed to this report.
Not much love for the middle of the country with only one town in Missouri and a couple in Texas. But with all the locations on the east and west coasts, they can claim that they now have fully nationwide mid-band 5G coverage.
The combined Sprint/T-Mobile will have 85,000 sites after eliminating 35,000 Sprint sites that are duplications, according to a Fierce Wireless article, so upgrading 85,000 sites at a rate of 1000 per month will take until 2027. That's assuming they will upgrade all those 85,000 sites, which they probably will not.