AT&T is kicking off the 5G revolution with its launch of America's first 5G mobile hotspot on Dec. 21. Initially, this new network will only come to dense parts of 12 cities, and the millimeter-wave spectrum that AT&T is using is more suitable for cities and suburbs than for the countryside.

Rural areas won't be left out of the 5G world, but 5G will be different there. It will enable new ways of farming and living. It will be a big deal, and many of its applications haven't been invented yet. But it probably won't give rural homes unlimited high-speed access to Netflix next year, which is what rural residents probably most want and are most frustrated by right now.

5G Will Go Rural But With Less Capacity

The multi-gigabit speeds and massive capacity you hear about with 5G is by and large an urban phenomenon, driven by the huge bandwidths of millimeter-wave spectrum, which doesn't travel very far. Rural areas will get a form of 5G called "low-band" or "sub-6" 5G, which will have less capacity but still have extremely low latency and be able to work with massive networks of industrial sensors.

Sprint is using its existing 2.5GHz footprint to build out a 5G network that will probably be appropriate for home internet. This 2.5GHz network covers some rural areas, but not others, as you can see on this map. (Click "LTE Plus - no 3G" for the 2.5GHz coverage.)

AT&T and T-Mobile will both hit rural areas with 5G starting in late 2019. The key is low-band, frequency-divided (FDD) spectrum, which current 5G chipsets don't support. But that will be sorted out later this year. On that spectrum, you should expect about a 35 percent increase in speeds and capacity from 4G, but a major drop in latency. Those networks may not have the capacity for home internet, but they'll change rural life in different ways I'll get into below.

Could 5G Solve the Rural Broadband Problem?

Rural Americans desperately want better home internet options. Many are dependent either on slow DSL, limited 4G, or unreliable satellite service. 5G will help the issue, but it isn't clear how much.

Low-band FDD 5G can use existing towers and existing coverage areas, but its increase in capacity probably won't be enough to let homes use the 151GB/month that Xfinity currently says is the average US home usage. In a 2016 paper, scientists from nine countries including the US concluded that only government subsidies would turn 5G into a real solution for rural home broadband issues.

T-Mobile and Sprint are claiming that they'll offer rural home broadband over 5G after their merger, but I'd be very, very hesitant to believe those claims. Companies will say anything to get a merger passed, and often they say things that contradict their other claims elsewhere.

Rural wireless engineering firm Finley offers another way 5G may help extend broadband in rural areas. With 30-50 percent of current buildout costs being the "last mile" to houses from main roads, carriers could build wired fiber along main roads (or use AT&T's upcoming Project AirGig to extend a backbone along power lines) but use fixed 5G home modems to make that last-mile connection. This kind of solution will likely take until 2021 to launch, though.

Fewer Rural Jobs, But More Productivity

Low-latency networks and massive Internet-of-things networks will play big roles in agriculture and health care, two big rural industries. As this article details, low-latency networks let fewer farmers grow more crops more efficiently, for better yields and higher profits. Farms will be studded with sensors that collect data to feed back to machinery. Farmers will have full views of all their crops, all the time.

I've seen several demonstrations of low-latency 5G enabling virtual physical therapy and remote surgery, bringing capabilities to rural health centers that may have previously required a trip to the nearest mid-sized city. But there will be a price to pay, and it will be in jobs. More autonomous farm machinery means fewer human farm workers; more connections to remote physical therapists means fewer jobs of that kind in rural areas. I don't see 5G as bringing more jobs and people back to the countryside; I see it as letting the countryside do more with less.

Autonomous Cars for Stranded Rural Residents.

Rural Americans are getting older, and families are moving away. Cars and trucks are absolutely critical to rural life. But elderly or disabled rural residents may not be able to safely drive any more. Low-latency 5G networks will help enable autonomous cars—not next year, but maybe in five years.

Technologically, that's going to be a revolution for people who are otherwise stranded in their homes. (It'll also make the roads safer after folks have had a big night out.) The unanswered questions are economic—whether self-driving car technology will be affordable to elderly and disabled rural residents, who typically have very low incomes.

We May See Bigger Changes a Few Years From Now

Getting massive bandwidth to rural areas means building out expensive networks over long distances. But over the next few years, we may see some technological advances that could change the game. Distributed networks and antenna systems can let one internet access point serve a broader area by acting as a springboard to smaller base stations spread over several miles. Setting up 5G on relatively new spectrum in the 3.7 to 4.2GHz and 6GHz bands could balance coverage and speed to solve some rural home broadband problems, although there are no concrete plans for networks on those bands yet.

Living in the country gives you clean air, lots of space, and quiet. But for the latest technology, you probably will still have to come to town.

Further Reading