USA TODAY International Edition
Shopping for 5G will take thinking
Finding the right kind requires investigation
5G wireless is no longer vaporware, but a lot of haze still surrounds the forms of 5G each nationwide carrier sells. The major carriers began rolling out 5G coverage more a year ago. However, their maps don’t clarify what sort of next- generation mobile broadband touches your neighborhood, nor can you easily identify the level of 5G service a phone provides. “Marketing from a 5G perspective is all over the place,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies. The underlying problem here is that U. S. carriers offer three kinds of 5G, each on different sets of frequencies that trade speed and coverage.
A look at all the 5G flavors
Industry experts describe the various flavors of 5G as similar toa layer cake:
• The lowest, widest layer is 5G on the same low- band frequencies as 4G. The increased efficiency of 5G makes it moderately faster, and you should eventually see this close to everywhere. AT& T and T- Mobile sell this 5G, while Verizon will later this year.
• Next up comes 5G on midband frequencies, with a considerable boost in speed at some sacrifice in range. This is T- Mobile territory, thanks to it buying Sprint and taking over its 5G bands.
• Millimeter- wave 5G tops the cake, outpacing many wired broadband connections but only reaching maybe 1,500 unobstructed feet. All three carriers offer 5G service here.
Sizing up 5G coverage, smartphones
To put numbers on this, consider the testing firm Opensignal’s 5G findings last year. AT& T and T- Mobile, almost all low- band 5G, averaged download speeds of 63 and 47 Mbps; Sprint’s midband hit 114 Mbps; Verizon’s mm- wave rocketed to 506 Mbps. ( Their 4G downloads ranged around 30 Mbps.) But where T- Mobile users had 5G almost 20% of the time, Verizon’s only saw it 0.5% of the time.
Coverage maps and phone specs at the carriers’ sites gloss over those distinctions.
AT& T’s map shows its low- band 5G – as of last week, spanning the nation – but not millimeter- wave, which it labels “5G+.” ( AT& T has sold its fastest 4G as “5G E”; ignore that puffery.) Another page touts some two dozen mmwave 5G markets but offers no further coverage detail.
Of the seven 5G phones AT& T sells, the Samsung S20+ 5G and S20 Ultra 5G support both 5G and 5G+, as listed under “Wireless technology” in their specs; others do only low- band.
Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D. C. To submit a tech question, email Rob at rob@ robpegoraro. com. Follow him on Twitter at @ robpegoraro.