T-Mobile CTO Accuses Other Carriers of 'BS' on 5G

Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray said only T-Mobile is serious about rolling out 5G everywhere. “There’s a LOT of hype about 5G right now … and some real BS that’s being peddled,” Ray blogged Thursday. He took a shot at Verizon, the first to launch 5G with a fixed offering (see 1812180003). “Verizon’s intentions for 5G are for it to be only available in very limited areas,” he said. “They only use millimeter wave spectrum, which covers less than a square mile from each tower and gets blocked by doors, windows, walls, trees, cars. ... They’ll only provide 5G to a few small pockets of a few urban centers.” AT&T got slammed, too. It's "so worried about how limited their 5G footprint will be that they’ve renamed their existing LTE network ‘5G Evolution,” he said. “They’re calling their super limited mmW deployment ‘5G+.’ I’ve heard they even have plans to show a 5G network indicator for LTE on consumers’ devices to hide the fact that actual 5G will be scarce.” Verizon didn't comment. “We’ve said we’ll have nationwide 5G in 2020 on a network that includes both high- and low-band spectrum,” responded an AT&T spokesperson. “We’re live with standards-based, mobile 5G in a dozen markets and have announced the next cities as well. We’ve already announced that we’ll have three 5G devices by mid-2019 that use a mix of high- and low-band spectrum.”