Over the past few years, 5G technology has been all over the news. While the adaptation of 5G promised to deliver some of the most revolutionary ideas including metaverse, self-driving cars, AR glasses, and more. But, in reality, it had more constraints than previously anticipated.
This year, the scenario might change with several mobile carriers implementing the latest 5G improvements. For starters, T-Mobile’s ‘Ultra Capacity’ network, can offer a significant boost over 4G LTE.
As for AT&T and Verizon, they haven’t been able to deliver the speed and reliability they promised earlier. Laying the foundation, both the carriers are working their way throughout the country, not just the major cities.
The Latest C-Band Upgrade
Both the carriers were actually using a combination of the low-band spectrum along with higher millimeter-wave frequency to deliver their 5G network. While the overall speed was much faster than any imaginable home network, it took a significant hit in coverage.
In other words, unless someone like in a certain area of the city, the promised 5G speed was not achievable. Using low-band 5G networks on the other hand are much similar to that of 4G speed, primarily focused on coverage.
So, the most realistic action for 5G is to find the middle ground, which is known as midband. Not only it offers higher speed than low-band network and 4G LTE, but at the same time provides better coverage as well.
After acquiring Sprit back in 2020, T-Mobile got an early lead in implementing midband. As for AT&T and Verizon, they made a huge bid for Midband on a Federal Communications Commission auction called the C-band.
Using the C-band signals, Verizon plans to deliver high-speed internet with up to 1 GB per second download speed for 100 million customers. AT&T aims to reach out to at least 75 million customers while expanding to 100 million by 2023.
Even T-Mobile whose download speed is over 400 MB per second is also planning to add C-band to their network by the end of 2023 as well.
What About the Cable Companies?
Home broadband is one area where we might see a large competition in 2022. With the implementation of the C-band 5G spectrum, consumers are going to have more choices. Even the rural areas might experience true broadband for the first time. So it’s just a matter of time until these three carriers launch their new tariffs for this year.
