Almost Half of T-Mobile Network Traffic Now 5G

Nearly 50% of T-Mobile’s network traffic is now 5G, compared with 10% a year ago, President-Technology Neville Ray, told a Morgan Stanley conference Wednesday. The company’s 5G offering uses its 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz holdings. “As we go through the balance of this year, the intent is to have pretty much all of that [2.5 GHz] spectrum dedicated to the 5G game,” he said: “We've made great progress on that as we move through '20 and '21.” Ray said more than 40% of postpaid smartphones are 5G capable. About 80% of Sprint cellsites will be decommissioned by the middle of 2022, he said. “There are tens of thousands of sites that we're in a position” to take offline, he said. “We have to upgrade the sites that we’re keeping,” Ray said: “That work is already progressing well. Over the two years, we’ve spent a lot of time really understanding information and data about Sprint customer usage on the network we didn’t have access to previously. Now we’re able to, on a site-by-site basis, measure and quantify customer impact.” T-Mobile said Thursday it’s making its 5G Home Internet service available through 7,000 Metro by T-Mobile stores across the U.S. “This move makes the Un-carrier first to launch a fixed wireless home broadband service for prepaid customers, with no credit check and no annual contracts,” the carrier said. The service costs $50 monthly with "a one-time gateway purchase."