Frustrated by the speed of mobile computing? Texas – North Texas in particular – will be one of the first areas to brag that they’ve got mobile 5G service.
AT&T announced early on Wednesday that it plans to offer 5G to customers in a dozen cities, including parts of Dallas, Atlanta and Waco by the end of this year. The Dallas-based telecommunications giant will announce additional cities in the coming months.
AT&T is the only U.S. carrier that’s announced plans to deliver this technology to its customers in 2018.
The company said it will add more 5G capable mobile devices and smartphones in early 2019 and beyond.
“After significantly contributing to the first phase of 5G standards, conducting multi-city trials, and literally transforming our network for the future, we’re planning to be the first carrier to deliver standards-based mobile 5G – and do it much sooner than most people thought possible,” said Igal Elbaz, senior vice president, Wireless Network Architecture and Design. “Our mobile 5G firsts will put our customers in the middle of it all.”
The company’s initial mobile 5G deployments this year will be based on 3GPP standards and operate over mmWave spectrum. AT&T will use mmWave to provide mobile 5G in some areas, and then we will deploy the technology on additional spectrum bands.
The company says the 5G implementation will seamlessly integrate with current LTE technologies “using the non-standalone configuration outlined in 3GPP release 15.”
AT&T said it expects to reach theoretical peak speeds of multiple gigabits per second on devices through mobile 5G, as well as lower latency rates.
To roll out this new technology, AT&T is opening a new 5G lab in Austin.
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One of the first in-house projects built at the lab is the Advanced 5G NR Testbed System (ANTS). ANTS is a first-of-its kind 5G testbed system and is proprietary to AT&T, according to the company.