We've heard a lot of talk about 5G from the major US carriers lately, and today Sprint joined in to share its own 5G rollout plans.
Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said that his carrier plans to launch its 5G network in 2019. "Sprint is the only carrier that won't have to compromise its 5G network experience," Claure touted on Twitter, saying that the 5G coverage will offer "blazing fast speeds, low latency, and multi Gbps for both download and upload." While discussing Sprint's Q3 2017 earnings on a call today, Claure clarified that Sprint's 5G network will launch in the first half of 2019.
Claure added that Sprint is best positioned to be the first carrier with nationwide mobile 5G. Sprint has more than 160MHz of 2.5GHz spectrum in the top 100 US markets, the CEO explained, as well as the largest nationwide block of sub-6GHz 5G spectrum in the US.
The Sprint CEO also detailed other network improvements that'll be rolled out. Sprint is planning trio-band site upgrades to leverage its spectrum for better performance, says Claure, as well as deploy thousands of new cell sites to densify and expand coverage. Also coming is more small cells for better capacity and data speeds and 64T64R Massive MIMO 2.5GHz radios that'll increase capacity up to 10 times that of current LTE systems and boost data speeds.
Sprint has caught some flak for its network performance in the past, so it's no surprise to hear that it's got big plans for its network coming. That all sounds pretty exciting if you're a Sprint customer, but we'll have to wait and see if Sprint can indeed roll out the network upgrades that it's touting.