The last few years have seen T-Mobile's growth explode; the company has grown from 49 to 74 million subscribers from to present, and it's added over a million subscribers in every quarter so far in In the same time period, T-Mobile has invested only slightly in mid-band spectrum.
T-Mobile's reliance on its relatively limited mid-band holdings is observable in Tutela's data. Assuming that T-Mobile's subscriber growth continues, the heavy utilization of its mid-band spectrum points to a capacity crunch in the future.
While its investment in MHz will be good for coverage, the average 31 MHz of Band 71 it holds nationwide won't provide a meaningful increase in capacity. Worse, T-Mobile's limited mid-band and non-existent high-band holdings will make adding capacity through network densification challenging.
Small cells are heralded as the key for adding capacity to a network, especially with 5G. The same propagation characteristics that make low-band spectrum ideal for rural coverage preclude its effectiveness for small cell deployments; mid-band and high-band frequencies are better suited for small-cell applications, as more micro cell sites can be added to an area without interfering with each other or the macro cell.
This is where Sprint's spectrum holdings could come into play. Sprint holds nearly 80 percent of the licenses for 2. Sprint hasn't built that spectrum out fully, thanks to a lack of customers and capital, but New T-Mobile, with more customers and a budding 5G network, will be able to make use of the prime mid-band spectrum for a 5G network with better coverage than competitors relying on higher-band spectrum.
One thing that neither T-Mobile nor Sprint have in abudance, however, is millimeter-wave spectrum. Meanwhile the other guys have been focused primarily on millimeter wave which can offer fast speeds but has severe limitations and is generally limited to a few outdoor areas of some cities. It could be years before most of their customers see a meaningful boost from C-Band, and even then, the propagation characteristics limit their mid-band 5G coverage footprints. And with Sprint now part of T-Mobile, the Un-carrier is widening its lead, lighting up Ultra Capacity 5G across the country and bringing fast 5G speeds to more places than anyone else.
Ultra Capacity 5G can deliver speeds around Mbps with peaks of 1 Gbps, and now covers million people. Capable device required. Fast data is just one promise of 5G, though: Ultralow latency and the potential to connect millions of devices, such as industrial sensors, are other key advantages with industry-transforming potential.
And with the potential of 5G, the ability to aggregate these attributes and bandwidth from multiple bands could in time provide whatever combination of speed, capacity, coverage and low latency is required—even, if necessary, all at the same time. This means that 5G is highly versatile—capable of supporting a variety of use cases with different requirements.
For example, while industrial sensors require high capacity, latency is not always important. One example is the MHz spectrum deployed by T-Mobile nationwide. A low-band cell site can cover hundreds of square miles and deliver a downlink data rate from Mbps download—ideal for uses like streaming HD video.
Operators are using mid-range frequencies spanning 1 GHz and 6 GHz to strike a balance between coverage and capacity, with operators currently deploying 2. T-Mobile has access to spectrum in this range, and other mid-band frequencies are either being repurposed from 3G or upgraded from 4G.
These bands are fairly well harmonized globally, which suits them for the potential of international roaming. Mid-band 5G base stations can transmit and receive high-capacity signals over fairly large areas, and they can represent an ideal mix of performance—including some networks providing download speeds around Mbps—for the bulk of 5G traffic in metropolitan areas.
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