The Future of 5G
You Love 4G, But It’s Just a Little Too Slow…
Don’t Worry…5G is Right Around the Corner!!
Metropark provides all of the main Mobility carriers to you, but since we’ve always focused on cutting edge technologies, AT&T often seems to be at the forefront. It’s no coincidence that they are aiming to be the first U.S. carrier to launch standards-based, mobile 5G services — something they’ve been praparing for nearly two years — to customers this year (2018). Unlike some of their competitors, they plan to offer a 5G-capable device to customers later this year as well. After all, what’s the use of a highway without an on-ramp?
AT&T has a history of being first when it comes to 5G. A year and a half ago, they launched the industry’s first enterprise 5G trial in Austin, Texas, to start learning about mmWave and testing 5G equipment. Shortly after AT&T began that trial, they were hungry for more data. So they took their 5G show on the road. Late last year, AT&T expanded 5G trials to more people and businesses in Waco, TX, Kalamazoo, MI, and South Bend, IN.
Waco, Texas
Participants: Small and mid-sized businesses
- Provided 5G mmWave service to a retail location more than 150 meters away from the cell site and observed wireless speeds of approximately 1.2 Gbps in a 400 MHz channel.
- Observed latency* rates at 9-12 milliseconds.
*NOTE: Latency impacts things like the time between pressing play and seeing a video start to stream or hitting a web link and seeing a webpage begin to load. For context, MIT researchers discovered the human brain ‘latency’ is 13 milliseconds.
- Supported hundreds of simultaneous connected users using the 5G network.
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Participants: Small businesses
- Observed no impacts on 5G mmWave signal performance due to rain, snow, or other weather events.
- Learned mmWave signals can penetrate materials such as significant foliage, glass, and even walls better than initially anticipated.
- Observed more than 1 Gbps speeds under line of sight conditions up to 900 feet. That’s equal to the length of 3 football fields.
South Bend, Indiana
Participants: Small business and residential customers
- Observed a full end-to-end 5G network architecture, including the 5G radio system and core, demonstrating extremely low latency.
- Successfully provided gigabit wireless speeds on mmWave spectrum in both line of sight and some non-line of sight conditions.
AT&T worked with a variety of customers in different parts of the country to conduct these trials — from a small car wash in north Austin, to the popular Magnolia Silos in Waco, to a family in South Bend. AT&T wanted to see how 5G and mmWave worked in every type of environment—for every type of customer.
From a millennial that streams video all day on their smartphone, to people who just need an internet connection to surf the web, to businesses that need highly secure, reliable networks to manage their enterprise data every day, AT&T 5G has been tested to serve your needs.
By conducting these trials and inventing specialized measurement equipment to study other aspects of 5G in great detail, AT&T collected mountains of data and insights to comb through, obsess over, and ultimately act on. Plus, the Metropark Mobility Team is working with AT&T on additional trials! These trial learnings are guiding their commercial 5G launches this year and will help ensure they are building a 5G network that is both real and reliable for everyone. Contact our Sales team to learn even more!
Contact Sales