Softbank, Qualcomm and Sprint to collaborate on commercial “5G” development at 2.5 GHz
Qualcomm, Sprint and Softbank have declared that they will work on bringing the still-developing 5G New Radio standard to 2.5 GHz so that Sprint can deploy commercial “5G” services.
Although the companies offered few details, they said that they “plan to provide commercial services and devices in late 2019.”
Sprint has put particular emphasis on its 2.5 GHz holdings as an opportunity for relatively low-band 5G deployments. Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati Robbiati said late last year that, “In our mind, 2.5 GHz is going to be to 5G what 800 [MHz] is to the 4G world.”
Sprint also is tapping into higher spectrum bands in its 5G network trials, including the 73 GHz band in conjunction with vendor Nokia and the 15 GHz band with Ericsson.
During its most recent quarterly call, Sprint executives outlined plans to also leverage its 2.5 GHz holdings for LTE, through a combination of new devices that support high-power user equipment features to boost the coverage range of that spectrum (such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, LG G6 and ZTE Max XL) and network densification. Sprint expects to spend $3.5 to $4 billion on network-based capital expenditures in the coming year.
AT&T and Verizon have thus far focused on pre-standard 5G deployments around fixed wireless services, while T-Mobile US put a stake in the ground last week with the declaration that it would pursue mobile 5G using its newly won 600 MHz holdings. T-Mobile US CTO Neville Ray noted in a blog entry that in addition to the 600 MHz spectrum, the carrier also has holdings in the 28/39 GHz bands that cover major metro areas that it can leverage for commercial 5G.
Watch a video on Verizon’s millimeter wave testing related to fixed wireless services below:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsSrl-7Im7M[/embedyt]
