Enlarge / 5-coverage card from T-Mobile.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile announced today that it has launched “America’s first nationwide 5G network,” but T-Mobile’s definition of “nationwide” does not include about 40% of the US population.
“America is getting its first nationwide 5G network today, with more than 200 million people and more than 1 million square miles,” T-Mobile said.
The US Census Bureau estimates the population at more than 330 million people. T-Mobile has not forgotten the other 130 million people in the US, as it says in a sentence halfway through the courier’s press release that “the T-Mobile network covers more than 60 percent of the population.” Covering an area of 1 million square miles, the courier’s 5G network also covers approximately 28% of the country’s 3.53 million square miles, and is far beyond the geographical reach already provided by the 4G network of T-Mobile.
We asked T-Mobile to explain why it defines “nationwide” as “60 percent of the population”. T-Mobile did not answer that question.
T-Mobile’s 4G LTE network includes more than 325 million people.
US coverage card is usually 4G
T-Mobile said its 5G network today “reaches more than 5,000 cities and towns across the country” and the company has published a list of those places. There are 19,495 places listed in the US.
Despite actual coverage, T-Mobile’s announcement uses the word “nationwide” to describe the current range of its 5G network a dozen times, while admitting that “coverage (in some areas) is not available.” In the coverage map of T-Mobile, which is at the top of this article, you can see that the 5G areas shown in a darker pink hue do not include large parts of the country covered by T-Mobile 4G. Alaska is completely excluded.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere today posted a tweet announcing the “first nationwide 5G” network and a video saying “nationwide 5G is live”. But Legere did not specify in the tweet or video that the national 5G excludes 40% of the US population.
First * NATIONWIDE * 5G * ️‼ ️‼ ️‼ ️☝️
That is the @TMobile way ???? # Nationwide5G
– John Legere (@JohnLegere) December 2, 2019
The 5G service announced today is not much faster than the T-Mobile 4G service. That is because the “national” 5G, which covers 60% of the population, uses the same 600 MHz spectrum that T-Mobile already uses for 4G. The large speed increases at 5G are expected to come from the millimeter-wave spectrum, but those higher frequencies do not travel that far and are mainly used in densely populated urban areas.
AT&T acknowledged last month that its 5G service on low-band spectrum this year offers only 4G-like speeds, with actual speed increases next year. Verizon said that 5G on low-band spectrum is more like “good 4G,” and T-Mobile said in April that millimeter-wave 5G “will never essentially scale beyond small pouches of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments.”
