If you’ve been following the gradual, scattered, and messy US 5G rollouts of the past year or so, you probably already know the nation’s major wireless service providers have adopted radically different strategies in their efforts to swiftly improve mobile connectivity in a meaningful way.
AT&T is Manhattan’s somewhat surprising speed champion
We’re talking a massive advantage over Big Red in both median and maximum download speeds on mmWave spectrum, as well as a slight edge over T-Mobile and Sprint in low-band 5G median and maximum download speeds.
T-Mobile’s approach is already paying off big time
That essentially means the “Un-carrier’s” customers can get access to all three 5G flavors in the “Big Apple”, enjoying the insane speeds made possible by the most sophisticated cellular technology… with major availability limitations, as well as the unrivaled low-band coverage and the best of both worlds with 2.5 GHz mid-band spectrum.
It’s also important to highlight how much faster T-Mo’s mid-band 5G network is compared to the same exact technology employed by Sprint prior to the aforementioned merger. The “Now Network”, by the way, will continue to be evaluated separately from its new owner until their resources and spectrum are “fully integrated” and combined, which may take a few more months.
Last but not least, we should point out Magenta’s mmWave 5G speeds are actually not bad at all when considering the advantage Verizon and AT&T currently hold in terms of owning that particular type of spectrum.
It will naturally be interesting to see how these networks continue to evolve and improve in the near future, as T-Mobile plans to buy and deploy more high-band spectrum to serve juicy “layer cakes” in other parts of the country, while AT&T and Verizon are expected to splash out on an upcoming mid-band auction to try to fix their most glaring flaws.
