Another 5G milestone was reached. Congratulations to AT&T and their wireless users. Yesterday, they announced their 5G network is officially nationwide. This is a major milestone in the race to 5G. This is a big deal in these early days of the next generation of wireless. Carriers are rapidly moving in the same direction. So, let’s take a look at what this means for consumers, business customers, investors and other industry players.
Immediately following their earnings call last week, I was invited to a private analyst briefing where Gordon Mansfield went into more detail with a few analysts about what this nationwide move means for AT&T, users and the entire industry as it rapidly moves to 5G.
AT&T is always in the forefront bringing new services and next generation services to market.
5G wireless is coming. They’ve been working on this for the last few years. In fact, all wireless players are upgrading as quickly as they can. Over the next few years every wireless player and every handset will operate on 5G standards.
Today, we are still in the very early years of this transformation from 4G to 5G. That’s why this announcement is so exciting. It shows the transformation is fully underway and moving rapidly.
COVID-19 or the coronavirus has slowed progress of many companies in many industries. We wondered how it was impacting wireless.
This shows the move to 5G is still moving ahead rapidly. AT&T Mobility and in fact every wireless carrier is still transforming their networks from 4G to 5G as quickly as ever.
AT&T now reaches 205 million people in 395 markets
This announcement from AT&T says its 5G now reaches 395 markets all over the U.S, reaching 205 million people.
The FCC says a provider is nationwide after crossing the 200 million people mark.
Today, only AT&T and T-Mobile combined with the Sprint network are the only two wireless carriers to pass this point. Verizon is scheduled to cross that mark later this year.
Becoming a full 5G network will still take several years to complete from all the carriers. They must start out in each market and spread their 5G network footprint nationwide from there.
Then, once in a market, the networks have to expand to cover the entire network area, one area at a time.
There is no point in time when a network is 100 percent anything. Today, every wireless network still has 3G in some locations, is mostly 4G and is moving to 5G. That’s the way the it always progresses.
Plus, equipment makers need to bring 5G smartphones, tablets and other gear to market. We are now seeing quite a bit of new devices coming to market.
5G empowers autonomous vehicles, telemedicine and more
Plus, 5G means more than just wireless smartphones and tablets. It will also impact and transform industry after industry like self-driving cars, TeleHealth and more.
So, 5G is a very exciting area going forward for our entire economy and in fact for our civilization.
5G means not only speed, but immediacy without lag. This is called latency, or low latency. Speed and low latency will empower the next generation of every technology from every industry in our lives today.
5G means increased speed and low latency
It will also unleash the power of the creative minds bringing us new thinking like Uber and Lyft did during the last decade with 4G.
Looking at the history of the wireless industry, as we moved from 2G to 3G to 4G, it took some time to reach every corner and every user in the USA. So, it will take time for 5G to reach every nook and cranny as well.
That’s why this news of becoming a national 5G provider is such a big milestone. It teaches us that carriers are moving ahead faster than ever before. That’s why this is big news not only for AT&T and their users, but for all wireless players in the market today and for wireless investors.
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