T-Mobile stokes the 5G race, targeting nationwide coverage by 2020
Earlier today it was reported that at the Morgan Stanley European Technology, Media, and Telecoms Conference in Barcelona, T-Mobile USA’s (TMUS) Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray said T-Mobile would roll out its 5G network in the U.S. by 2020. This builds on the recent news that AT&T (T) would bring its 5G Evolution service to Minneapolis by the end of 2017 as part of its plan to have the service running in 20 markets before 2018.
From our perspective, this moves the notion of 5G from an ephemeral event to one that now has an increasingly firm line in the sand. This has set a ticking clock because for those networks to launch, the network operators much first build and test their networks. This means the operators, such as T-Mobile USA, AT&T, and others both in and outside the U.S. must buy and install 5G infrastructure equipment over the coming quarters. We see this as a positive development for the networks business for Tematica Investing Select List holding Nokia (NOK), which has been a drag on the company’s operating performance of late.
Typically, when we see announcements like the one T-Mobile made today, it tends to erupt in a flurry of similar announcements from competitors. The last thing any of them want is to lose Connected Society data-hungry users to a competitor with the latest mobile broadband technology offering. These announcements are likely to bring the 5G conversation back into focus and that will recent investor attention on wireless infrastructure businesses like the one at Nokia.
T-Mobile will deploy 5G service nationwide by 2020, CTO Neville Ray said this morning. And it will leverage much of its new 600 MHz to do so.“We’re committed to drive a 5G rollout by 2020 across the nation, and neither AT&T nor Verizon have stepped up to that challenge,” Ray said during an investor conference in Barcelona, Spain, this morning.
“There’s been a lot of discussion [of] millimeter wave and the kind of surgical, tactical deployments of 5G, and we’ll be there too. But we’ll deploy in the 600 MHz for 5G as we move into the next decade.”
Both of the country’s two largest carriers have focused heavily on fixed wireless technologies and services as they progress toward fully mobile 5G in the coming years. Verizon is testing fixed 5G service in 11 markets around the country with the aim of significantly increasing its internet footprint beyond what it currently services with its wired Fios service. AT&T launched fixed wireless 5G tests earlier this year in Austin, Texas, and is expanding those tests to at least three more cities by the end of the year.
Source: T-Mobile: We’ll have nationwide 5G by 2020 | FierceWireless
