T-Mobile is wasting no time improving its 5G network with Sprint's mid-band spectrum
T-Mobile has been extremely active in hyping up its "nationwide" 5G network, which made its impressive debut around five months ago, expanding relatively quickly to even more places after already covering over 200 million people and 5,000+ cities and towns at launch.
But while Magenta has remarkably managed to solve the 5G availability equation on its own in totally unrivaled fashion, it's no big secret that T-Mobile's next-gen network still has a bit of a speed problem. As highlighted in several real-world tests of late, said 5G speeds are barely higher than the numbers you've routinely come to expect from 4G LTE connectivity nowadays.
Of course, that was the old T-Mobile, while "New T-Mobile" is preparing to put its bold short-term plans into action now that the long-delayed Sprint merger is finally completed. In case you were wondering how soon you'd be able to experience the positive effects of the union between the nation's third and fourth-largest wireless service providers, the answer is unsurprisingly very soon.
According to T-Mo President of Technology Neville Ray, work is already underway on deploying mid-band 5G spectrum in Philly. That's only one city, so it may not sound like such a big deal, but Ray apparently told a duo of Cnet reporters recently to also expect "rapid" expansions to "other cities" in the "coming weeks."
If you're not familiar with the current 5G lingo, Sprint's mid-band 2.5GHz spectrum was essentially the number one reason why T-Mobile pursued this merger so aggressively. T-Mo's existing 5G network is built on a low-band 600MHz foundation, which allowed the "Un-carrier" to spread its signal fast and wide while providing only a marginal speed upgrade over its 4G LTE technology.
The mid-band tech T-Mobile is already working on integrating, meanwhile, should enable a significantly more meaningful improvement in download speeds across large cities like Philadelphia, but also smaller ones and even certain rural areas around the country.
Obviously, we'll have to wait a few more weeks to see what kind of numbers "New T-Mobile" customers might be looking at, but although we fully expect important jumps, Verizon's mmWave-based Ultra Wideband 5G network will undoubtedly remain unrivaled in terms of speed... wherever you can actually tap into it.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: