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Using a 5G phone for the first time is a bit anti-climatic, if I'm honest. When I bought a ThinQ V50 from LG on Sprint's 5G network in Dallas on Wednesday, a representative from LG urged me to watch how fast YouTube videos would load. It was fast, no doubt. But after taking out my device and remembering what the same experience was like on AT & T's soon-to-be-obsolete LTE network, the difference seemed almost negligible.
But my perception of how time passes in the millisecond range aside, the facts are the facts: in almost all the dozens of speed tests I've done in and around the Marriott hotel in Irving, Texas, about 10 miles northwest of Sprint's 5G network 27 to 45 times the speed of my 4G service. At its peak, the network was pulling data at 528 Mbps. It's two and a half times faster than my Spectrum Home Broadband service, which just 19 km east of the hotel, falls just beyond Sprint's 5G antennas.
The question of whether someone really needs such a fast phone service is, in my opinion, totally irrelevant. For me, to understand its current usefulness seems to me useless. As stupid Field of dreams A cliché is almost worth typing, because as for any technology, once its potential ubiquitous, its potential will inevitably be exploited to the maximum. For the moment, however, early users of 5G will have at least some bragging rights. And do not be fooled, it has a lot of market value. Over the next year, users of the 5G could even spend tens of minutes looking at loading icons. This too is definitely worth something.
In Dallas, Sprint's new 5G NR (new radio) service is expected to reach approximately 1.6 million people over an area of 575 square miles. The service was launched simultaneously on Thursday in Houston, Kansas City and Atlanta. In total, about 11.5 million people got coverage, which John Saw, Sprint's technical director, calls "the largest initial footprint of 5G in the US." Over the next few weeks, the company plans to expand to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, etc. and Washington DC
The basic technology behind this breakthrough is called Massive MIMO (Multiple In / Out). It is essential to know that Sprint 5G towers are equipped with a total of 128 antennas, as opposed to antennas 4 to 8 of traditional base towers, including 64 transmitters and 64 receivers. These dozens of additional antennas greatly increase the capacity of each tower. Unlike AT & T's super-high-frequency millimeter wavebands (28 GHz and 39 GHz) and T-Mobile's low bandwidth portfolio, Sprint uses the 2.5 GHz mid-frequency spectrum. T-Mobile is very keen to gain access through the proposed merger, which qualifies it as absolutely crucial to provide an "ideal mix of coverage and capacity".
Saw boasted that Sprint is the only operator to use what the company calls "split mode", namely the ability to simultaneously provide LTE Advanced and 5G NR services. "We can actually kill two birds with one stone," he said, pointing out that in a shot at AT & T probably it could not be done with millimeter waves.
Sprint was determined Thursday to show the dynamism of his network to a group of journalists the size of a class. After serving breakfast burritos and cold coffee, a half-hour presentation was held to showcase the company's achievements. It included testimonials from Michael Combs, CEO of Sprint, Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President, and Research and Development. Following the meeting, the journalists were taken outside and on a well-equipped bus for a short drive, with the aim of demonstrating the transparency of the network transfer experience. the network.
The monitors in the bus performed a continuous speed test, which exceeded 500 Mbps and rarely exceeded 300, except when the speed test application was forced to cool off. Download speeds were twice as fast on the road as on the second floor of the hotel, where the top speed was around 200 Mbps.
After a mile or more, the bus stopped next to a large green garbage dump filled with hay bales and a broken brown divan. Ryan Sullivan, Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at Sprint, stood up to speak to passengers. "We stayed on our 5G network all the way," he said. "It's really what we wanted to demonstrate here: it's not a network of" access points "5G." The remark aimed to offend Sprint's competitors, whose networks she seeks to describe as "irregular" and unreliable on the move.
It's not false. Take the Chicago Loop, an area of less than three square kilometers along the city's waterfront, where Verizon's 5G cells have been operational for almost two months. In April, Gizmodo found that while customers could reach a download speed of up to 500 Mbps, the service only worked at 19 out of 50 intersections in the region. To Verizon's credit, we are not trying to minimize uneven coverage. "We are still testing, we are still learning," said a spokesman for the company at the Chicago Tribune, who also found that the service was up to the hype "when it works".
Sullivan said the road we were in Dallas included a total of three transfers, which means we connected to three separate towers during this 30-minute trip. The speed tests, at least, seemed mostly unaffected, beyond the types of fluctuations that would normally be expected. The decline in speed that occurs during transfers, he said, should be too short for users to appreciate. "It's broad coverage," he said, "with features similar to what you expected with LTE."
Promoting its planned $ 26.5 billion merger with T-Mobile, which allowed FCC President Ajit Pai to benefit from this month's blessing, was also an important part of the demo from Sprint. Its leaders argued that the merger would actually promote competition, despite the counterintuitive nature that it may seem. "You can expect our competitors to not stay still," said Combs CEO. "This means that they will also be forced to speed up their own 5G projects in order to stay in the race."
The Ministry of Justice, whose agreement also requires agreement, seems less convinced. Reuters announced this month that the government's lawyers were ready to block the merger. And Bloomberg said that a solution could force T-Mobile and Sprint to part with a new competitor in an attempt to fill the void left after both became one.
Asked whether the company has separate plans for its future in 5G – a strategy for a successful merger and another in case the deal breaks down – Thursday's deployment should demonstrate that the company must keep its schedule. independently of the result. "What I would say, too, is that we will quickly face some limitations," he added.
Combining the company's capabilities with T-Mobile's low-bandwidth spectrum, he insisted, is critical to advancing 5G in the future. And that's maybe the truth. Industry experts do not fail to say so. Consumer advocates, on the other hand, find Sprint's claim that large market consolidations encourage competition is crazy. Gigi Sohn, a leading lawyer and former senior adviser to the FCC, described the conduct conditions in the consumer protection proposal as "speculative, unfounded, and totally inapplicable".
Nothing in the documents filed by T-Mobile indicates that they are able to achieve the goals they have defined, she said, "and look a lot like the broken promises of other major broadband providers , telephony and cable, they are extremely optimistic. "
In terms of hardware, Sprint claims the title of the largest 5G device portfolio in the US, including the LG V50 ThinQ and the HTC 5G Hub, a hotspot-like device equipped with a touch screen that can support up to 20 connections. soon to replace fixed broadband service in some homes. This summer, Sprint customers will also be able to use their 5G network with a Samsung Galaxy S10 phone version.
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