Sprint Adds NYC, LA, Phoenix, & Washington to 5G Network

[jiyeon]

Source: The Verge

 

Spring has launched its 5G network to 4 additional cities, New York City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, DC.

 

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Sprint is announcing the next phase of its 5G rollout, and at an event in New York this morning, it added some big cities to the list: the service will launch in New York City, Phoenix, and Washington, DC today, August 27th, and it will launch in Los Angeles on August 28th, as the company promised back in February.

 

This additional coverage means Sprint now has a total of nine cities with 5G networking.

 

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Those cities join the existing 5G coverage from Sprint in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City that the carrier rolled out earlier this year. With these additional cities, Sprint says it’ll have approximately 2,100 square miles of 5G coverage, which is a benefit of the longer-range but down-spectrum technology in the 2.5GHz range that Sprint is using for its initial 5G rollout.

 

In The Verge's article, the journalist noted that his colleague tested Sprint's network last year, that he observed Sprint's 5G network speeds are lower slower than for example Verizon's network, but the benefit to Sprint was that network works better indoors and has a wider ranger.

 

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As my colleague Chris Welch noted when he tested Sprint’s network earlier this year, the fact that Sprint isn’t using mmWave technology means that speeds are slower than, say, Verizon’s network. But Sprint’s network does work better indoors, and it offers far better coverage than the more limited Verizon network.

 

I live in the United Kingdom so I'm not up to date with how the USA is developing their 5G networking, but if I were in the USA in one of those select cities - I'm going New York City, baby - I'd likely choose Sprint as I prefer having a more reliable network connection than raw networking speed on my phone. That is provided I carry one of the new 5G devices, which at the moment, I do not. I don't know how pricing works in the USA either so as you can tell I am far out of the loop on North American 5G networking.

 

Nonetheless, it is nice to see 5G networking developing and growing in both the United Kingdom and the United States, each with their own selected mobile networks and their competitiors.

[Guest]

I've read this post like 4 times and don't see anything about keyboards.

You ok?

[The King of the Undead]

cool! to bad I can't afford a 5g simcard.

[jiyeon]

6 minutes ago, will4623 said:

cool! to bad I can't afford a 5g simcard.

Nevermind a 5G SIM, getting a new phone just for 5G sounds nuts enough.

 

11 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

I've read this post like 4 times and don't see anything about keyboards.

You ok?

If you know me well, you know my favorite city in the world that I've visited is New York City, so when I saw the Verge article about Sprint adding 5G to NYC, you know I had to share.

[Origami Cactus]

Is there any actual point to 5G?

It requires way more transmitters, and only offers faster speed.

 

Like 4g is 350mbit a sec, which is already plenty fast enough for a mobile phone, i would rather have better 4g coverage than 1gbit on my phone.

 

[TheSLSAMG]

16 minutes ago, sowon said:

he observed Sprint's 5G network speeds are lower slower than for example Verizon's network, but the benefit to Sprint was that network works better indoors and has a wider ranger.

I use Sprint and I live in NYC. To the point about speed, that's definitely true of Sprint on average. The absolute fastest speeds I've seen on their 4G LTE network are around 45Mbps up/down and on average, it's closer to 25Mbps.

 

Honestly Sprint isn't horrible. They offer an actually unlimited plan and they're less expensive than the other major carriers. But my experience with indoor signal and range has been quite the opposite.

[jiyeon]

3 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

Is there any actual point to 5G?

It requires way more transmitters, and only offers faster speed.

 

Like 4g is 350mbit a sec, which is already plenty fast enough for a mobile phone, i would rather have better 4g coverage than 1gbit on my phone.

I questioned that too and I think it's for a specific minority of people for now. Where are you getting the 350Mbps figure from?

Here in the UK, at least for EE, I get 90Mbps tops on 4G and the 5G is alledgedly rated for 360Mbps according to my local EE store.

 

I'm not entirely sure if the employee was on 4G or 5G, but he said he is on a 120GB/month plan and he benefits from the speeds as he uses his phone 3/4 of the day whether it be at work or home as a mobile hotspot.

For the typical user like me, where I only ever use my phone when I'm outdoors, or just catching up on notifications and/or social media, I don't need 5G connectivity since I find my 4G connection to be fast and reliable enough.

 

8 minutes ago, TheSLSAMG said:

I use Sprint and I live in NYC. To the point about speed, that's definitely true of Sprint on average. The absolute fastest speeds I've seen on their 4G LTE network are around 45Mbps up/down and on average, it's closer to 25Mbps.

 

Honestly Sprint isn't horrible. They offer an actually unlimited plan and they're less expensive than the other major carriers. But my experience with indoor signal and range has been quite the opposite.

Those speeds aren't bad, it's comparable to what I get on 4G on my phone on a rainy day.

 

Interesting stuff, I guess it depends on how far you live to a network tower?

[Commodus]

11 minutes ago, TheSLSAMG said:

I use Sprint and I live in NYC. To the point about speed, that's definitely true of Sprint on average. The absolute fastest speeds I've seen on their 4G LTE network are around 45Mbps up/down and on average, it's closer to 25Mbps.

 

Honestly Sprint isn't horrible. They offer an actually unlimited plan and they're less expensive than the other major carriers. But my experience with indoor signal and range has been quite the opposite.

This is actually one of those times when slower might be better.  The whole problem with millimetre wave 5G is that it's so high frequency it has virtually zero tolerance for walls or other interference.  You need to pepper the street with cell sites just to maintain continuous coverage.  Sprint's 5G operates on lower frequencies, so it's not as mind numbingly fast but is far more likely to maintain a connection... which is arguably what you want!

[Origami Cactus]

7 minutes ago, sowon said:

 

I got the figure from my local goverments testing for 4G testing in my area, so it may be even faster, but that is the max for me. 

I use 4G for my phone and for my computer internet.

Normal speed for me is 100mbit, top is about 150? Depends on the phone thought.

Very weird thing with 4g is that the upload speed seems to max out at 50mbit/s with all devices.

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, sowon said:

my favorite city in the world that I've visited is New York City,

That's only because you didn't have to stay. It's like babysitting someone else's kid lol.

I have 5Ge at the moment, goes that count?

 

Spoiler

Spoiler: It does not. I have to turn airplane mode on and off to get it to switch back to 4G so I can actually get some speed.

 

[BasicallyAMod]

i work in Downtown Phoenix, but i work in the basement. i have good 4G. is there any chance his will help me?

 

[Froody129]

Has anyone actually used 5G? I really don't see a point to it. I have no real desire for higher speed 

[Brooksie359]

I'm surprised these weren't the first cities to get 5g. I guess it somewhat makes sense because doing any sorta construction work in those cities is kinda a pain. 

[jiyeon]

43 minutes ago, BasicallyAMod said:

i work in Downtown Phoenix, but i work in the basement. i have good 4G. is there any chance his will help me?

 

Realistically only one way to found out and that's to hop onto 5G yourself. Mind you, it depends if you're getting good connection already or not.

 

22 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

Has anyone actually used 5G? I really don't see a point to it. I have no real desire for higher speed 

I've only heard of people using 5G, and most of the time, they need that speed for streaming content on their phone, or if they were to enable their mobile hotspots.

[DrMacintosh]

2 hours ago, sowon said:

but the benefit to Sprint was that network works better indoors and has a wider ranger.

So Sprints 5G network is literally the opposite of every other network they have right now. On Sprint, if you go into any concrete building you essentially lose all communication with the outside world if you don't have WiFi. 

[schwellmo92]

4 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

Is there any actual point to 5G?

It requires way more transmitters, and only offers faster speed.

 

Like 4g is 350mbit a sec, which is already plenty fast enough for a mobile phone, i would rather have better 4g coverage than 1gbit on my phone.

 

4G in Australia can already do up to 1Gb, I get about 200Mb sitting on my couch with like 60% signal strength. This whole 5G push is just marketing nonsense, 4G is very capable it just appears to be poorly implemented in EU/US from my personal experiences.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, Origami Cactus said:

Is there any actual point to 5G?

It requires way more transmitters, and only offers faster speed.

 

Like 4g is 350mbit a sec, which is already plenty fast enough for a mobile phone, i would rather have better 4g coverage than 1gbit on my phone.

 

It's not solely about single users speed, 5G can give 20+ times (from memory upto 100x) the capacity of 4G at the same speed.

 

So instead of 20 people getting 150Mb on 4G before congestion causes throttling, 100-200 people can get 150Mb on 5G.

 

 

[mr moose]

53 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

4G in Australia can already do up to 1Gb, I get about 200Mb sitting on my couch with like 60% signal strength. This whole 5G push is just marketing nonsense, 4G is very capable it just appears to be poorly implemented in EU/US from my personal experiences.

As I posted above, but, while there is a certain amount of poor implementation (especially in the US) they also have a significantly higher population density in the cities so the networks will be heavily congested.  I am sure they haven't truly saturated 4G (I believe sth Korea have a very reasonable 4G network with 21M people in the space of v1/10th of victoria), however building and shifting people to 5G is going to be necessary for for future growth.  If they don't start now they really will be in a lot of trouble later.

[schwellmo92]

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

I am sure they haven't truly saturated 4G (I believe sth Korea have a very reasonable 4G network with 21M people in the space of v1/10th of victoria)

South Korea has a much higher population density in its major cities (almost twice) than USA yet also has over twice the average 4G speeds. I think there's a lot of life left in 4G it really just is poor implementation. 5G will help in the distant future, sure, but currently it's just a marketing tool.

[mr moose]

44 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

South Korea has a much higher population density in its major cities (almost twice) than USA yet also has over twice the average 4G speeds. I think there's a lot of life left in 4G it really just is poor implementation. 5G will help in the distant future, sure, but currently it's just a marketing tool.

Fail to plan or plan to fail.  It's all the same shit if you don't start doing something about it now.

[spartaman64]

23 hours ago, TheSLSAMG said:

I use Sprint and I live in NYC. To the point about speed, that's definitely true of Sprint on average. The absolute fastest speeds I've seen on their 4G LTE network are around 45Mbps up/down and on average, it's closer to 25Mbps.

 

Honestly Sprint isn't horrible. They offer an actually unlimited plan and they're less expensive than the other major carriers. But my experience with indoor signal and range has been quite the opposite.

at the place im working at the building is basically a metal box and none of the people on t mobile get signal but i do on sprint