T-Mobile US Inc. has reportedly attained its goal of covering 200 million people in the United States, through its network of Ultra Capacity 5G. The company intended to reach this goal before the end of this year.
The network operator uses its label of ‘Ultra Capacity’ 5G for its mmWave and mid-band networks. Both bands provide much faster speeds in comparison to its low-band network of ‘5G Extended Range’. The low-band network, which has speeds equal to 4G LTE, has a wider reach, with the company claiming that it covers around 308 million people over 1.7 million square miles.
T-Mobile has been successful with its mid-band network with the carrier being crowned as the fastest in 2021. This is mainly owing to the coverage and strength of its mid-band spectrum release.
In the meantime, Verizon and AT&T have paused their mid-spectrum efforts. The two companies were planning to increase their mid-band coverage by using the C-band spectrum. However, that rollout has been delayed after a warning from FAA that the networks could interfere with the radio-based safety systems on some airplanes.
Interestingly, T-Mobile actually offers service to a fraction of the customers that can theoretically access its network, as there is a huge difference between coverage and actual use of T-Mobile by the customers. By the end of 2020, the network operators had just above 100 million subscribers which is much less than the 200 million people that can now access its faster 5G networks in theory.
Although the 5G UC network of T-Mobile has achieved the milestone, there is still a lot of work to do in further expanding its network. With dense urban areas and major US cities having concentrated clusters of population across, it is comparatively easier to attain these big coverage numbers.
As a result, the future rollout plans of the company are expected to go out much slower, with T-Mobile aiming to extend 5G UC coverage to 300 million people over the next two years.
Source credits:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/15/22783712/t-mobile-5g-ultra-capacity-mmwave-200-million-coverage