More than half of Americans are already aware of 5G and are excited about the innovations that 5G will deliver, according to a new survey from HarrisX that was commissioned by T-Mobile. Respondents also overwhelmingly believe 5G will create new jobs and positively impact their personal lives, rural communities, the economy, business and government.

“Consumer sentiment around tech innovation and 5G in particular is widely positive, with big expectations for impact on job creation, business, various facets of people’s personal lives like healthcare management in the near future,” said Dritan Nesho, chief researcher and CEO of HarrisX, in a statement. “Expectations are high, with over two in three Americans believing 5G will become a reality by 2020, which will require significant investment by the public and private sector to get there.”

The inaugural survey, which T-Mobile plans to produce on a quarterly basis with HarrisX going forward, found that 57% of Americans are aware of 5G, and of those who are aware, 90% believe 5G will be better than 4G or LTE. Moreover, 64% of the survey respondents who are aware of 5G expect it to be “widely available” by 2020. Reliability, speed and wider coverage were all cited as the most appealing aspects of 5G among those surveyed.

Sponsored by Blue Planet, a division of Ciena Embrace everything as a service. Appledore Analyst Report reveals what it takes to shift to NaaS, its many benefits and demands, and who's getting it right. CSPs need to evolve from legacy OSS and hardware networks to cloud-native, software-enabled networks. See who's leading. Read the article

HarrisX also reports that 61% believe 5G will be easy for consumers to adopt and one in three view the U.S. as the global leader in 5G technology. The survey also found that the importance of investing in technology innovation is agreed upon across the political spectrum with 94% of Republican respondents and 94% of Democrat respondents on board.

5G is expected to be a major theme at next week’s CES trade show in Las Vegas. And while T-Mobile is touting the results of this survey leading up to the big annual tech event, the carrier has yet to launch a 5G commercial service of its own.