Although T-Mobile's big "Un-carrier" announcement last week turned out to have nothing to do with the wireless service provider's increasingly ambitious 5G rollout and expansion plans, it seemed safe to assume it wouldn't take Magenta long to boast about some sort of new historical milestone, spectacular achievement, or world record on that latter front... yet again.
At first glance, this is little more than a recap of recent awards and titles handed out by market research firms and speed testers like Opensignal and Ookla, as well as a reminder of the "multi-year strategy" that put the third-largest mobile network operator stateside in an ideal position to dominate the industry for the foreseeable future. But in detailing this unrivaled and multilayered strategy... for the umpteenth time, Ray is actually also announcing a few big and previously unknown (or unspecified things).
Verizon is once again one step behind T-Mobile
First and foremost, we now know T-Mobile is "hard at work getting ready to light up standalone 5G this quarter." This quarter ends in September, mind you, while Magenta's previous standalone 5G launch timeline was slightly vaguer, setting the end of the year as a tentative deadline.
Lighting up a standalone 5G wireless service in the next couple of months would be a pretty big deal, essentially guaranteeing T-Mo will beat both Verizon and AT&T to the punch as far as another major breakthrough is concerned. Keep in mind that Big Red recently revealed its own "standalone core trial" has been completed, with a plan to "start moving traffic" at some point in the second half of 2020 and "full commercialization" scheduled for 2021.
As Neville Ray points out, standalone 5G technology will bring expanded coverage, improved latency, and faster uploads with it, eliminating the need for a 4G LTE backup for certain tasks and functionalities.
Of course, this groundbreaking tech will not instantly replace the current non-standalone 5G networks, so in a way, it's even more exciting to hear that T-Mobile's low and mid-band 5G signals are officially spreading to a few new places today.
The low and mid-band 5G love is spreading out
Customers in Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia, as well as those located in Topeka, Kansas and Sussex County, Delaware can finally experience Magenta's "nationwide" 600 MHz 5G coverage, with Buffalo, New York set to be added to the already impressive list of supported cities "soon" enough.
Last but certainly not least, Neville Ray is "proud to announce" the mid-band 2.5 GHz spectrum purchased from Sprint a few months ago is now live for T-Mobile customers in "parts of" Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles in addition to Philadelphia and New York, enabling much higher download speeds than what the aforementioned low-band technology is capable of.
If this particular proclamation sounds familiar, that might be because T-Mo buried it towards the end of a newsroom post about the June 2020 Opensignal 5G user experience report a few weeks back, where we dug it up from. We're guessing that was more of a "coming soon" announcement, and the improved 5G speeds are only now accessible in all five aforementioned cities (or rather parts of them).
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'.
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