T-Mobile blankets 60% of Americans with Ultra Capacity 5G thanks to Sprint's network bands

Still, what T-Mobile calls Ultra Capacity 5G is way zippier than its "Nationwide" 5G that barely measures up to Verizon or AT&T's 4G LTE network in speeds, let alone coverage. The Achilles heel of mmWave networks like Verizon's that are nominally speedier than what T-Mobile has deployed, is their minuscule coverage. Base stations have to be situated every 1000 feet or so in dense urban areas, whereas Sprint's mid- and T-Mobile's low- and mid-bands can produce signal that travels much farther.

This is how T-Mobile built a wider 5G network so fast that it now blankets 200 million people with something nominally faster than 4G LTE. According to Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy: "T-Mobile is more than a year ahead of its competition with the deployment of its Ultra Capacity 5G mid-band spectrum and is rolling it out at an unprecedented pace. While T-Mobile already has the best 5G coverage in the nation, the company has also made considerable gains in speeds thanks to the rapid nationwide rollout of its mid-band 5G network, which delivers a real, meaningful performance boost."

Needless to say, 200 million people is the easy number, reached by using mid-band Sprint spectrum in densely populated areas like big cities. Delivering anything faster to rural areas with the limited range that the mid-band allows compared to 4G LTE or even T-Mobile's low-band "Nationwide 5G" will take much more time. 

Still, the Un-carrier has "plans to reach 300 million people (more than 90% of Americans) in the next two years," as that's one of the Sprint merger promises it will have to ultimately keep.