Spring 5G Rollout
Sprint is on track to roll out the 5G in May, the company is not holding back on pushing innovation. They are working on 5G and are planning to roll out the next generation of cellular connectivity to its customers. The company recently announced that is quarterly investment has doubled to $1.4 billion. It is due to the 5G deployment, it is a great new for their current customers. But also, is good news for T-Mobile since a merger between the company should be happening soon.
With 5G comes higher speed, instantaneous communications and the capability to network everything. The roll out will start in selected cities with a higher number of cities in 2020. Sprint promise to begin the mobile 5G rollout in the first half of 2019 to nine markets including some of the largest cities in the country.
The first cities to go live is Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, thought Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and DC will likely to follow.
Sprint also mentioned Google FI customers would get access to Sprint’s 5G network, which is great news.
Sprint deployment strategy differs from AT&T and Verizon. The carrier will use excess 2.5GHz spectrum to initially build its 5G network.
The mid-brand spectrum will host Sprint’s LTE service but also be home to its upcoming 5G service. The carrier is building out tis towers with massive 128-antenna MIMO equipment to create a 4g/5G split. By doing so it will expedite their roll out services quicker and cheaper than their competitions.
While this strategy is bold it may also be some issues along the way like fast speeds compared to the mmWave, it doesn’t cover a large area and does a poor job of penetrating through walls and some type of glass.
That said Sprint will continue to build its 5G network on other bands. With the eminent merger with T-Mobile it could place the company to become the first robust nationwide 5G network.