The Results Are In: We Tested the Latest 5G Tech on All Three Carriers
We analyzed the new 5G systems from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon — and they’re all faster than ever.
By Sascha Segan
It’s going to be a hot year for 5G, and the heat starts now.
Each major US carrier has recently taken a step forward in 5G, with very different approaches and strategies. Over the last week we tested C-band on AT&T and Verizon, as well as 5G carrier aggregation on T-Mobile.
If you’re not a total spectrum geek, the rule here is that more megahertz is better. The new C-band 5G spectrum opens up more pathways for wireless home internet, as well as for new applications that we just haven’t seen yet, because the network hasn’t been there for people to invent them on.
Verizon, which has been suffering from congestion on its 4G network, is rolling out a lot of C-band, and is rolling it out fast. It’s patchy right now, but sure to improve quickly.
Verizon has maps, but you should treat them as aspirational, as they aren’t based on observed or measured coverage. Verizon takes its tower locations, applies some math, and paints the town red. And in some locations, it might be counting towers that are installed and on, but still blocked from public use for engineering or procedural reasons.
AT&T is just dipping its toe into C-band for now. While it lists eight cities, we drove around Chicago and only found one active tower. That’s because the carrier is waiting for new equipment, coming this summer, that will let it combine C-band with the even newer 3.45GHz band.
The most encouraging thing we found in our AT&T testing is range. If our software is correct, a C-band panel on a tall macro-cell tower can reach well over a mile, not a mere half-mile. That’s great news for spreading wireless home internet to the suburbs.
T-Mobile doesn’t have C-band, but it has so much mid-band 2.5GHz that it doesn’t matter right now. In tests in Chicago, we saw T-Mobile using 100MHz of mid-band at a time, where AT&T and Verizon have 80MHz (of C-band and 3.45GHz) and 60MHz (of C-band) respectively.
In New York, we saw T-Mobile combining its low-band and mid-band into 90MHz, and even experimenting with two mid-band channels for a total of 160MHz. T-Mobile is, at the moment, faster than its two competitors in all third-party studies. And our testing shows that it still has room to grow.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
