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T-Mobile goes back to its Verizon and AT&T-mocking roots to highlight its 5G supremacy (again)

By Adrian Diaconescu

Published: Oct 30, 2021, 5:49 AM

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T-Mobile goes back to its Verizon and AT&T-mocking roots to highlight its 5G supremacy (again)

Well, that didn't take long. It was only a few months back that we reported on T-Mobile's apparent shift from an advertising strategy largely reliant on pointing out the competition's weaknesses to a more "boring" approach, and already the "Un-carrier" seems to have returned to its old "Dumb and Dumber" ways... kind of.

While he did stop short of calling the first and third-largest US wireless service providers names, T-Mo President of Technology Neville Ray certainly pulled no punches at this week's MWC Los Angeles event when touting some of his company's greatest 5G achievements so far and even greater ambitions looking ahead.

Are the "other guys nuts" for not following Magenta's suit?

Verizon and AT&T may have indirectly acknowledged the errors of their initial 5G rollout ways by acquiring a wealth of C-Band spectrum recently, but according to Neville Ray, the two's revised network upgrade strategies remain inherently flawed from a number of key perspectives.

For one thing, T-Mo is hard at work on combining mid-band 5G technology with low-band for uplink, which is apparently a "super exciting" breakthrough... even though it doesn't really sound that way.

As you're probably well aware by now, 2.5GHz mid-band spectrum is T-Mobile's 5G crown jewel, striking an almost perfect balance between speed and availability that Verizon and AT&T simply cannot rival at the moment.

While low-band is a vastly inferior cellular standard, currently powering Magenta's not-very-impressive nationwide 5G Extended Range network, using that for uploads on 5G UC (Ultra Capacity) should further improve the mid-band signal's reach, in-building penetration, and yes, download speeds.

That's at least what Neville Ray claims will happen relatively soon, and yet for some reason Verizon and AT&T have apparently expressed no interest in implementing a similar technology for their future C-Band networks envisioned as direct alternatives for T-Mobile's industry-dominating 5G UC.

The only logical (and hilarious) conclusion is that the "other guys" must be "nuts" for not seeing what T-Mo sees as the future of 5G stateside.

AT&T's 5G+? More like "5G minus"

It was so incredibly predictable that T-Mobile would go after AT&T for its latest 5G branding shenanigans sooner or later that, well, we actually predicted just that a few days ago.

For those unaware, Ma Bell is using a 5G+ label for its blazing fast but terribly spotty mmWave signal right now, planning to expand... the meaning of the marketing moniker to cover C-Band technology as well in the near future.

Interestingly, the confusion arising from that, as well as Verizon's use of a 5G UWB symbol to describe something that very few customers can actually experience, is (partly) blamed by Ray on something that happened years ago.

Namely, AT&T's misleading use of a 5GE icon on phones that were in fact still connected to good old fashioned 4G LTE. That apparently "started" all of this confusion that still goes on today, but it's not like T-Mobile is doing a whole lot to end things in a clear and mature way. Not with the 5G UC logo encompassing both mid-band and mmWave technology, and with customers undeniably struggling to tell the differences between Ultra Capacity and Extended Range 5G (aka regular 5G) at first glance.

Of course, the point about AT&T's 5G+ network currently feeling like "5G minus" due to very limited availability definitely stands. After all, we're talking about a staggering difference between around five million people theoretically covered by Ma Bell's blazing fast mmWave signal and the 186 million (potential) T-Mobile subscribers capable of getting lower but still impressive mid-band speeds.

Keep in mind that the 186 million number is set to jump to "almost" 200 million by the end of the year alone and as many as 300 million people in 2023. That's close to the current availability of T-Mo's nationwide Extended Range 5G network, which is itself close to covering the entire population of the US.

In other words, it's almost physically impossible to envision a scenario in which AT&T or Verizon will be able to catch up to the early leader of the US 5G landscape anytime in the next two or three years.

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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.