First to 5G: Who Will Win?

摘要

The global sprint to be first to 5G continues-from first country to first smartphone to first carrier. In the U.S., ajor carriers make announcements, two of them stand out: Verizon and Sprint. Verizon has already pushed 5G live in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis and announced that 20 cities will have service by the end of the year using a 28-GHz network-part of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum. It will deliver extreme speeds to users in the cities where available, but, of course, only for those who have a device that can take advantage through a built-in 5G modem, or in some cases, an attachment.Sprint, on the other hand, announced that 5G is live in nine of its biggest markets. The company is in a unique position compared to other carriers because of the spectrum it has: 120 MHz of bandwidth at 2.5 GHz. Sprint is the only U.S. operator with enough bandwidth for 5G NR and LTE at the same frequency, but it has made no public announcements regarding leveraging mmWave spectrum to date. Instead, the company has taken a different approach, focusing on deploying base stations that leverage multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO).