Roger Fingas
The first U.S. cities supporting Sprint's upcoming 5G network will be Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., the carrier announced on Tuesday.
Full support in those areas is set to switch on in the first half of 2019. Ahead of then, though, people in Chicago, Dallas, and Los Angeles are expected to witness "5G-like capabilities" as Sprint rolls out a technology called Massive MIMO. That should come to Atlanta, Houston, and Washington later in 2018.
In fact the carrier says it intends to deploy "thousands" of Massive MIMO radios across the country during the next two years.
"All Sprint customers using a 2.5GHz (band 41) device will benefit from the increased capacity and speed provided by Massive MIMO," it added.
No Apple device yet supports true 5G. The standard is forecast to become extremely important in the near future, supporting data-heavy technologies such as self-driving cars, virtual/augmented reality, and video over 4K resolution.
AT&T disclosed its own 5G plans earlier this month. The carrier is expecting to deploy in 12 cities by the end of the year, among them Atlanta, Dallas, and Waco.
Verizon should begin a 5G rollout this year, but hasn't said where.
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7 Comments
Really looking forward to the rollout of Elon Musk’s new high-speed satellite Internet service. Could represent not only wider access and greater competition for existing providers, but possibly even access to a “new Internet” (an “Exonet”, if you will), one not tapped and monitored by every government and spy organization on Earth.
Sprints' 5G = Others' 4G
Goofy Ridge, Illinois, and Hell, Michigan, you'll just have to hold your wee-damn horses.
Random thought-
Considering the state of Sprint’s current network in Atlanta, maybe they should concentrate on getting 3g running first.
If I recall Most cellphones didn’t support 4G till like the 3rd year with 4G and it appears 5G is not even standardized yet, so what sprint is calling 5G(before it’s out) will maybe be labeled 4G in a couple years. I think it was another couple years before we had 4G in our state, so we’ll be waiting while they rush to be first vs the other carriers.