While 5G has been touted as the new generation of data connectivity, it’s still taking some time for it to reach a huge number of users. Smartphones that support 5G are also just starting to become more available for users so there are still a lot of devices out there that can only connect to 4G. T-Mobile has now announced a milestone for their “5G Ultra Capacity” service as it’s now able to reach 200 million users so that seems good news for their subscribers.
The switch from 4G to 5G is still not that noticeable since the difference between the slowest 5G and the fastest 4G is minimal. So what we’re seeing now is that carriers are trying to bring a wide range of band coverage in low, mid, and high-band 5G. T-Mobile seems to be doing a pretty good job of that and this includes 5G UC a service that is unique to the carrier and which they say is their fastest-available 5G coverage.
Now 200 million people in the U.S will be able to see the 5G UC branding on their smartphone if they are able to access the network. It is able to work with 2.5 GHz and 24/28/39 GHz bands and actually works together with T-Mobile’s 5G Extended Range which has a bit of low-band 5G. The uncarrier is covering a collection of different bands so they can say that they have a wide range of 5G-brand coverage in the U.S.
If you’re still a bit confused, low-band is defined as under 1GHz, mid-band is 3.6-6 Ghz, and High-band is 24-40 Ghz. Beyond 24GHz is also defined as Ultra-Wideband, a term that is also thrown around when talking about 5G. If you have band coverage in all three, then there is a high chance that users will get a significant amount of speed increase. It may not be the major difference that we experienced when the switch from 3G to 4G happened, but it is still an improvement all the same.
The next challenge for T-Mobile and other carriers is to convince people that they need to upgrade their smartphones to 5G-capable ones, if they haven’t done so yet. A lot of the new flagships and even mid-range devices are already capable so it should be a bit easier for those looking for new smartphones anyway.
