On January 19th 2022, Verizon and AT&T activated their C-band networks, and in doing so, finally shook up the 5G dynamic in the U.S.
At the end of last year, an Ookla report positioned the U.S. as the world leader for 5G availability, but when compared to other early 5G adopting countries, it fell short in the category of 5G speed, ranking dead last.
However, something big has happened in the U.S. since December that changed the 5G game: C-band. C-band is mid-band spectrum between 3.7 and 4 GHz, and when further considered alongside CBRS, which is mid-band spectrum from 3.5 GHz to 3.7 GHz that was authorized for wireless service provider commercialization in 2020, the overall 5G spectrum landscape in the U.S. is rapidly evolving. And because the lack of available mid-band spectrum for 5G in the U.S. is the likely culprit behind the country’s poor speed performance, this year’s speed rankings might look different than last year’s.
Midband has been described as “the goldilocks of spectrum” because while you can only get the speed with the high band and only coverage with the low band, the midband is almost like a combination of the two. In other words, you get much better coverage than possible with millimeter wave (mmWave,), but also enough allocated spectrum to achieve some of the speeds promised by 5G.
“While Europe and Asia were focusing on midband, the U.S. was focused on mmWave and doing the best they could with that spectrum, but now with C-band and CBRS, the game has changed completely,” said Sebastien Prieur, the group manager of 5G Transport and RF at EXFO. “In the end, everyone will mix high band, midband and low band because each band is complementary to each other.”
Explaining the global spectrum climate further, Reiner Stuhlfauth, technology marketing manager at Rohde & Schwarz, commented: “In the first years when 5G started, mmWave was only in Korea and the U.S. But now the mmWave range is expanding, spreading into other countries. The opposite trend, the big hype in the U.S. with the C-band. In Europe we don’t care because this was our primary band for 5G.”
AT&T and Verizon deploy C-band
On January 19th 2022, Verizon and AT&T activated their C-band 5G networks, and in doing so, finally shook up the dynamic in which T-Mobile was the only U.S. carrier using large swaths of mid-band spectrum for 5G in the form of the 2.5 GHz spectrum that is got its hands on following the April 2020 acquisition of Sprint.
It became clear just how important mid-band spectrum would be for nationwide coverage when the C-band auction raised a gross total of $81.17 billion, far surpassing the previous auction record of $44 billion raised in the AWS-3 auction that ran in 2014-2015.
Verizon, alone, spent more on C-band spectrum than the AWS-3 auction raised from all bidders — $52.9 billion. That amount of money got Verizon 3,511 licenses in all of the 406 geographic Partial Economic Areas (PEA) that make up the United States. Other top bidders, in terms of dollar amounts, include AT&T, which spent $23.4 billion for 1,621 licenses in 406 PEAs; T-Mobile US, which spent $9.3 billion for 142 licenses in 72 PEAs; and US Cellular, which spent $1.3 billion for 252 licenses in 99 PEAs.
AT&T secured 80 megahertz of spectrum and a 29% share of the available licenses during the C-band auctions, and the carrier said it plans to deploy this mid-band spectrum starting at the end of 2021.
At the end of March 2022, Opensignal released a report that explored the 5G speeds seen on each carrier’s mid-band 5G networks, concluding that the carriers are using their C-band spectrum in “very different ways.” T-Mobile had a two-year head start using the previously mentioned 2.5 GHz spectrum, but now, Opensignal said it observed “widespread” C-band use by Verizon users, resulting in a visible improvement to 5G Download Speeds. AT&T’s users, however, appear to connect to mid-band 5G very rarely.
This difference in approach is consistent with the firm’s previous findings related to Verizon’s and AT&T strategy, as well as with RCR Wireless News’ reporting. In January 2022, for instance, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said its C-band coverage will initially reach more than 90 million potential customers and boost its ability to bring Fixed Wireless Access broadband to another 9 million households. AT&T, meanwhile, said at the time that it is kicking off its C-Band deployments on a smaller scale, with operations beginning in parts of only eight cities.
Opensignal’s Verizon users observed a significant increase in the 5G Download Speed experienced on the network following the activation of C-band spectrum but did not see the same in the carrier’s 5G Upload Speed. AT&T users did not experience a statistical change in either average 5G download and upload speeds.
By activating C-band, Verizon achieved an upward shift in its national 5G Download Speed score by about 15 Mbps (26.7%), rising from an average of 55.7 Mbps seen in the six weeks before, to an average of 70.6 Mbps afterwards. Again, no such shift was detected on AT&T’s 5G network.
“We are off to a fast start with C-Band and we are seeing better than expected performance,” Verizon SVP and Chief Engineer Lynn Cox told RCR Wireless News. “Right now, on sites where we have deployed C-Band we are seeing more than 30 percent of overall traffic leveraging this spectrum– even more than we expected. This is not only giving our customers a great experience on C-Band, but our LTE bands are freed up and we are seeing better performance on those bands as a result. The massive capacity of C-Band leads to more opportunity across the board.
While Opensignal’s reporting has consistently shown that T-Mobile users have the fastest overall 5G download speeds, that story starts to change slightly when comparing only the mid-band 5G speeds for each carrier. That’s because the bottom line is that mobile users on all three of the carriers’ networks — although in limited markets in the case of AT&T — enjoy much faster 5G speeds when connected to mid-band 5G, Opensignal found. On T-Mobile’s mid band spectrum, users experienced average 5G download speeds of 225.5 Mbps, while Verizon users saw an average speed of 211.8 Mbps and AT&T users an average of 160 Mbps. On the other hand, Verizon’s 5G Upload Speed on mid-band 5G was 20.7 Mbps, while AT&T and T-Mobile’s scores were statistically similar at 18.5 Mbps and 18.2 Mbps, respectively.
Cox revealed that Verizon currently has 60 megahertz of C-Band spectrum deployed, with plans to average 161 megahertz per market. “This is more than double our sub-6 spectrum holdings before the C-Band auction,” she said.
