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Sprint lights up 5G

by Kelly Hill
written by Kelly Hill Share
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Sprint has officially launched its commercial 5G service in four markets, with 5G availabile in the Kansas City, Missouri area as well Atlanta, Georgia and Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and touting a “true mobile 5G experience.” Devices will start selling on Friday, with Sprint’s 5G offerings including the LG V50 ThinQ 5G and the HTC 5G Hub, and the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G expected to arrive this summer.

Sprint executives sent a steady stream of tweets as the carrier made final preparations for its launch announcement.

The launch event in Dallas also included a bus tour with members of the media and analysts, in which screens displayed available 5G speeds as the vehicle moved around the city.

Sprint described its initial footprint as the largest U.S. 5G footprint at launch, with coverage of about 2,180 square miles and 11.5 million people total once the first nine markets are launched. In the first four markets, its footprint includes:

– In Kansas City, coverage of 625,000 people within about 225 square miles from downtown Kansas City, MO, to Sprint’s headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas.

-In the Atlanta area, Sprint covers an area from downtown Atlanta to Dunwoody that includes about 150 square miles and 565,000 people. 

-In the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, Sprint says it is covering 1.6 million people and about 575 square miles. The carrier described its coverage in the area as including Irving and downtown Fort Worth, Las Colinas and the North Dallas area from Preston Hollow to Addison, as well as destinations including the Will Rogers Memorial Center, Montgomery Plaza, and Sundance Square in Fort Worth; Williams Square in Las Colinas; the Dallas medical district in the areas of UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas; and Village on the Parkway in Addison.

-In Houston, Sprint is covering 165 square miles and 800,000 people, in an area ranging from downtown Houston to Memorial City Mall and City Centre Plaza and around attractions including the Museum District, Houston Zoo, Medical Center and Memorial Park. Sprint said that its coverage includes Houston-area stadiums such as NRG Park, BBVA Compass, Minute Maid and Toyota Center; and the University of Houston, Rice University and Texas Southern University. 

Sprint is leveraging its vast spectrum holdings at 2.5 GHz and split-mode capabilities of massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) equipment to support both LTE and 5G NR simultaneously, with 60 megahertz of spectrum dedicated to each technology; the carrier has said that because it is deploying both technologies at 2.5 GHz and on existing LTE sites, it will have a “nearly identical” footprint for 2.5 GHz LTE and 5G New Radio.

Sprint expects to launch 5G service in areas of Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; New York City; Phoenix, Arizona and Washington, D.C. in the coming weeks.

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Kelly Hill reports on network test and measurement, AI infrastructure and regulatory issues, including spectrum, for RCR Wireless News. She began covering the wireless industry in 2005, focusing on carriers and MVNOs, then took a few years’ hiatus and returned to RCR Wireless News to write about heterogeneous networks (remember those?) and network infrastructure. Kelly is an Ohio native with a masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on science writing and multimedia. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian and The Canton Repository. She lives in northern Virginia, not far from Data Center Alley.

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