AT & T declares "world leader" in 5G despite 0 consumer devices

AT & T announced it launched a 5G commercial network in 12 cities late last year, but six months later, the silence from AT & T's 5G customers was deafening: the company announced that it had brought the number of its cities to 19 and even peaked at 2 Gbps in April, but unlike their rivals Verizon and Sprint, no smartphone was sold. That did not stop CEO John Donovan from declaring AT & T "the global leader" of 5G and "certainly the leader in the US" at a Credit Suisse teleconference this week.

Donovan seems to suggest that AT & T's success can be measured by a measure different from that of its competitors: it's not about serving consumers "by walking down the street trying to find a network "But rather" focusing on the fact that 5G is a business "where it simultaneously advertises services for cities along with specific offers.

In Chicago, AT & T targeted 5G for patient care and ambulatory care at Rush Hospital, while in Austin, he was working with Samsung to deploy robotic manufacturing. "So, everything we did was not scattershot a city," Donovan said. "We did not think, well, get out of the countryside. We are committed to investing in this business. "

For consumers, AT & T's 5G marketing has been at least confusing, if not worse. The company never announced that it would focus exclusively on enterprise customers early in its deployment and deployed a confusing consumer network called "5G Evolution," which was not actually 5G. When it launched its "5G +" service using high-speed millimeter-wave short-range equipment, it indicated that it used Netgear Nighthawk 5G hot spots, but still did not offer it to regular consumers.

At the same time, Verizon deployed 5G in homes and smartphones in a handful of cities, as did Sprint, which launched 5G networks and devices in four cities last week. While neither company has full coverage of 5G in any of its launch cities, their construction processes are both public and ongoing, while AT & T has generally been opaque.

For its part, AT & T has just announced that the price of its initial 5G service is 70 USD per month for a meager 15 GB of data, with 29 cities planned at the end of 2019 and national coverage 5G the year next at still unknown prices. Donovan suggested that the company still study prices for the consumer, but "our current intention is to consider it as a premium network," which could result in additional charges for specific 5G applications and share them with developers. ; applications. . It can act "from a three-sided business model rather than a two-sided business model," Donovan said. "It's not quite clear yet."