For our first post, how about a discussion on the various nuances on 5G as it stands right now?
What is 5G?
5G, in short, is the latest radio technology coming out of the wireless industry. It is meant to complement, and eventually replace 4G LTE. The big selling points are lower latency, wider channel widths, more flexibility in network configuration (including being able to run functional parts of the network in the cloud), and supporting a higher density of devices in a given cell sector.
To we mobile users, it frankly does not offer a lot of benefit in many scenarios versus 4G LTE, and will not for several years. 5G can not yet handle phone calls (except for some limited locations on T-Mobile, and Dish wireless as of today). Depending on carrier, 5G is only on a handful of bands, mostly just enough so the carriers can legally claim they have 5G turned on somewhere. On most phones, even when the phone says 5G, you are still actually using 4G LTE for the primary bulk of your data connection. The phone just hides this from you.
Scenarios where we can see benefit right now:
- Large venues that have mid-band and millimeter-wave 5G installed, 5G-capable phones should remain usable
- Rural areas where 5G home broadband deployments have taken place
- Downtown urban environments with millimeter-wave and mid-band 5G should see less slowdown
5G Configurations
There are two types of 5G implementation utilized right now.
“NSA” – non-stand-alone. To use this type of 5G, your phone must always be connected in parallel to what is called an LTE anchor band. This configuration will limit access to some of the advantages of 5G such as lower latency, higher speed, and also it will limit coverage on some level as the FCC limits the total radio output of a phone. The power output limit sum of all the radios transmitting can not exceed this threshold. As a result, transmitting on multiple radios at once limits the effective range a phone can reach in weak signal environments.
“SA” – stand-alone. This type of 5G only connects to a 5G packet core, and does not require any connection to an LTE network. This is what 5G will eventually be for all carriers. This is the mode that will finally expose all the advances that wireless marketing is currently claiming exists. It can use carrier aggregation to aggregate multiple 5G bands, and at least on T-Mobile, it currently exists.
The way 5G pairs with LTE right now, is using a method called carrier aggregation. When a phone on LTE and/or 5G connects to a cell site for data sessions, the phone can add several carriers to the connection in parallel. You can be connected to 5 LTE channels and one 5G channel at the same time, for example.
The most common configuration seen on current 5G networks, is the 5G ENDC (E-UTRAN New Radio – Dual Connectivity) flag is turned on in a given region/cell/band. This flag will make your phone show a 5G icon even though you will likely not be actively using 5G. When you start using a data session, your phone will bind to several LTE signals and 5G signals if reception allows. This changes dynamically as you are connected and is the piece that is hidden. On carriers like Verizon and AT&T, even if you connect for Internet, it is completely possible your data session isn’t actually using 5G even though your phone indicates 5G availability due to the ENDC flag being set to true. Eventually, as more bands are converted to 5G, more of these aggregated connections will be 5G. As carriers fully support 5G-SA, they will no longer have a need to use LTE as a support mode.
Next, lets review 5G breakdown by carrier.
Verizon
Verizon early on made a large investment in millimeter-wave 5G. The limited range and inability for these high frequencies to penetrate buildings, and even windows, requires a large density of cells. Often these are mounted on light poles at street corners. They have since purchased C-Band spectrum in the 3GHz range that can reach further and penetrate better than millimeter-wave. Verizon is currently doing a big push to deploy this 5G across the US.
Verizon has deployed “nationwide 5G” to at least pretend they have a 5G network. They took 5-10MHz uplink/5-10MHz downlink of their CDMA 1x 850MHz band across the country and deployed 5G on this tiny sliver of spectrum. It does not have any benefit, and many users have experienced a slower network behavior when connected to this network. It was deployed for marketing purposes, as mentioned above, so they can legally claim they have 5G coverage.
Verizon did not purchase much radio spectrum over the last decade. They also have not been building cell sites to fill in the coverage holes that will be left once they shut off their 3G network at the end of 2022. As a result of these decisions, the network has slowly become over-crowded and slow. Another problem is, since they started requiring phones to be activated “CDMALess” – which is a mode that does not allow new phones access to their old 3G network, users on newer phones have noticed places where Verizon no longer seems to have service.
Now that Verizon has purchased spectrum to play catch-up, and this new spectrum will require an increase in cell site density to function, Verizon customers should see an increase in speed and reliability in the coming year.
Verizon is currently using 5G NSA.
Verizon also does not support Voice over 5G, called VoNR (New Radio). All voice calls and message signaling will continue to take place over the LTE network.
So, Verizon’s 5G will not really have any teeth until the network is further evolved. For now it is basically a speed boost for LTE at the expense of battery life and coverage. For customers frustrated with Verizon data slowness, it will eventually be a much needed relief.
AT&T
AT&T, like Verizon, only supports 5G-NSA right now. Their coverage maps are probably the most dishonest of all four carriers. They claim to have 5G in many square miles where there is none. Also like Verizon, where they do currently have 5G, it is generally a 5-10MHz uplink/5-10MHz downlink sliver of 850MHz or 1900MHz spectrum, just enough to say they have 5G, without any actual benefit.
Unlike Verizon, AT&T has been regularly purchasing bands of radio spectrum over the last decade and regularly performing cell site hardware updates. Their 4G LTE network is actually very performant and has a lot of capacity. One can expect to see download speeds of 80Mbps quite frequently while traveling at highway speeds, and download speeds in excess of 400Mbps are not uncommon on a fully modernized site. Upload speeds tend to be at least a few megabits or more. This is more than enough bandwidth for the data thirst for the current generation of mobile devices.
AT&T has also purchased C-Band spectrum, and over the next year gains should be seen there. They tend to be slower and more methodical about upgrading cell sites in any given region. They bill it as their “one-climb” method of upgrading a cell site. As this becomes deployed, their NSA 5G will show real speed gains.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile’s network is the closest to “real” 5G in the US right now. They support 5G-NSA, 5G-SA (stand-alone) and as of today, Voice over 5G (VoNR) in select markets. T-Mobile has deployed their 2.5GHz mid-band 5G network over a large portion of the US, resulting in a great boost in data speeds.
The 2.5GHz n41 band also allows a mode called HPUE, unique to this band and band 14. HPUE stands for “High Power User Equipment” and it basically means mobile devices supporting n41 HPUE can transmit at a higher power level on this band than normally allowed. This will help with coverage as one gets further away from the cell site.
T-Mobile’s 600MHz band 71 5G coverage can penetrate further than Verizon or AT&T’s low band frequencies by a tiny bit, which helps both rural and indoor scenarios. It is not a very large channel, and often shares some of its capacity with a 5MHz/5MHz LTE channel.
T-Mobile’s methodology tends to be more rushed than the other carriers. Likewise, T-Mobile inherited a lot of bad psychology from their Sprint acquisition. The result of these combined is that while they have the most deployed 5G in the US, their network is much more brittle than the other two. They have not fully sorted out proper behavior for bands/modes in a given coverage area. You will see situations where a voice call shifts off a low-band frequency in a weak signal area to a high-band frequency, resulting in voice call drops. You will see situations where you drive up a hill on NSA, you lose your NSA anchor band, and 4G will just flicker between bands attempting to find one rather than falling back to low-band.
T-Mobile, unlike Verizon and AT&T, tends to prefer to keep your phone stuck on midband LTE bands like b2/b25 or b4/b66 in all scenarios except the very edge of the cell. This results in your phone’s battery draining faster. By comparison, AT&T and Verizon tend to keep phones camped on lower bands like 12/13/14 which will save phone battery power. Voice call setup also can take a terribly long time and has stability issues. T-Mobile will also try to hand active voice calls off of b12/b71 onto the midband bands in scenarios that could result in a call drop…which…it does.
The experience ends up being mostly performant, but sometimes frustrating, and not the best if you use your phone as a…phone. It is a great option for home 5G Internet, however.
MVNOs
MVNOs on the three carriers all use older SIM cards. So regardless if you use Mint, US Mobile, Google Fi, H2O, etc., you will not have access to 5G-SA, even when Verizon and AT&T start supporting it. Most of these MVNOs will support some flavor of non-stand-alone 5G. This will be seen most on T-Mobile, as T-Mobile has some data configurations that are 5G-SA only, and since MVNOs do not support it, you will be limited to their legacy LTE network more frequently.
On Verizon- or AT&T-backed MVNOs, there really is not much difference depending on the features of the plans. US Mobile is a good example of feature difference here. Phones on their Verizon Black SIM will only get 5G, or certain types of 5G, depending on the type of plan and phone you have.
Dish
Dish is building out a 100% 5G network from scratch. This also means they will support Voice over NR immediately. They currently sell one phone and one hotspot in markets that they currently offer service. Technologically they are existing in several odd band configurations, which may make it challenging for them as the other carriers have often played games where certain models of phones lack certain bands to harm competition. (Although they’d never admit it.) Their network is in its infancy and it is too early to tell what will happen there.
What’s Next?
We’ll continue see all three major carriers continue to upgrade their networks. Verizon seems to be attempting to catch up to T-Mobile as fast as they can, but they delayed for so many years and left big holes to fill. They also have had multiple large network outages which is very uncharacteristic of their brand. AT&T is in an ok place, but from an industry perspective the perception is they are extremely lagging. T-Mobile is expanding their voice over NR support quickly as well as their n41 network to beef up bandwidth. Overall, we seem to be experiencing a coverage decrease but speed increase vs 3G technologies until carriers all backfill with more modern radios/antennas. Since they all have mostly shut down 3G though, the coverage aspect will now be hidden from we the consumer. We won’t know coverage used to be better with nothing to compare to.