May 2 (UPI) — Wireless carrier T-Mobile said Tuesday it is putting muscle behind building 5G as a revolutionary improvement in wireless communication.
“Listen, 5G is going to be AMAZING — maybe the most transformative technology of our lifetime,” T-Mobile chief technology officer Neville Ray said in a statement.
Ray also took aim at competitors AT&T and Verizon, accusing them of confusing consumers about 5G.
Ray announced T-Mobile’s intention to build the first fifth-generation network nationwide — with the help of government low-band radio waves it won at auction last month for $8 billion. The purchase quadrupled T-Mobile’s low-band capability.
“We are going to dedicate part of the new 600 MHz spectrum we just won to LTE and then part to 5G,” Ray said. “This means T-Mobile is the first company to commit to building a nationwide 5G network.”
AT&T, Sprint and Verizon have also started to upgrade or prepare to upgrade their networks to 5G speeds.
“5G networks will be different than the voice networks of the past built using low- and mid-band spectrum,” Sprint told CNet. “They’re best served with high-band spectrum that can move large volumes of data at very fast speeds.”
T-Mobile, like AT&T, operates on the GSM cellular system, which is widely considered the global protocol standard and is utilized by virtually all networks outside the United States. Sprint and Verizon run on the Code-division multiple access (CDMA) system.
