5G trial in Waco will give way to commercial service this year
Ahead of a planned commercial 5G service launch later this year, AT&T is continuing trial activities around the country, including in Waco, Texas, where the carrier has deployed 5G-backed Wi-Fi for Magnolia Market at the Silos, the brainchild of HGTV Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanne Gaines.
After the trial launch last year, Melissa Arnoldi, AT&T president of technology and operations, provided an update on the trial network performance. Using its 28 GHz millimeter wave spectrum, AT&T has observed wireless speeds around 1.2 Gbps using a 400 megahertz channel, and latency rates between nine and 12 milliseconds.
Arnoldi explained how trial activity informs commercialization plans. “By conducting these trials and inventing specialized measurement equipment to study other aspects of 5G in great detail, we collected mountains of data and insights to comb through, obsess over and ultimately act on. These trial learnings are guiding our commercial 5G launches this year and will help ensure we’re building a 5G network that is both real and reliable for everyone.”
AT&T launched its first 5G trial in Austin, and has expanded to Waco, Kalamazoo, Mich., South Bend, Ind. AT&T has publicly announced it will launch mobile 5G in 12 cities this year, but has so far only named Waco, Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Ga.
During an interview at Mobile World Congress 2018, AT&T VP of RAN and Device Design Gordon Mansfield said, “My priority in ’18 is to get those 12 markets launched. That is absolutely our number one focus and priority.” In January, company CEO Randall Stephenson said on a conference call that the launch device would be a “puck,” which would be like a Wi-Fi hot spot that would pass on the high throughput of millimeter wave mobile services to other devices.
Arnoldi said nearly two years of testing has provided the necessary data to support commercialization. “My team spent countless hours collecting data and talking to real people who elected to join the trial. What worked? What didn’t? What did we need to change? Why was this happening here and not there? Would mmWave spectrum really work to deliver 5G? Did we really just hit that speed in South Bend?
“We had a lot of questions when we started. And we’re confident we have all the answers we need to deploy a mobile 5G network that works for people all over the country.”
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