T-Mobile recently announced that it is rolling out its standalone 5G network in the United States, a first of its kind in the industry.
T-Mobile already has a huge market share of the current 5G network in the U.S. However, this new standalone network the company rolled out will push it even further. With this recent rollout, the company should be able to reach at least 250 million people.
Aside from the new standalone 5G network, the telecommunications giant will continue to maintain its current non-standalone network. This network includes all of its core 4G LTE services that are capable of supporting the 5G network.
A race to dominate 5G
Many tech experts believe that the future of telecommunications is a 5G network. It comes as no surprise why almost all telecom companies in the world are rushing to implement it.
Although there is already an existing 5G network in the U.S., these are not standalone networks. These networks rely on existing 4G network infrastructure to deliver the signal. Most companies use various techniques to use 4G infrastructure to deliver 5G signal.
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What T-Mobile did is launch a standalone 5G infrastructure that does not rely on these rather old 4G ones. The company claims that with this new infrastructure, it can slash down its latency by up to 40%. This means an upgrade of up to 20% to 30% faster download and upload speeds.
With this new standalone 5G infrastructure, T-Mobile can expand its 5G presence by as much as 30% in the country. This massive coverage includes more than 7,500 cities, 250 million people, and over 1.3 million square miles of land area.
Benefits of standalone 5G
The current 5G infrastructure in the United States, while fast and powerful, has several drawbacks. Users usually complain about the inconsistent and intermittent signal outages. Most importantly, the current 5G infrastructure requires a lot of battery power.
The current infrastructure needs smartphones to open both their 4G and 5G sensors. This will drain the battery of a device since two sensors are activated at the same time. Standalone 5G infrastructure only needs the 5G sensor to be activated, so there is less power consumption.
However, not all 5G smartphones support this standalone infrastructure. This means that not all T-Mobile devices can connect to it. Nevertheless, this is still a great achievement for the telecommunications giant.
Featured image courtesy of T-Mobile/YouTube Screenshot