Names additional 5G cities, highlights innovation center R&D and overall investment, and announces Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung as 5G suppliers



AT&T* plans to introduce mobile 5G in parts of five additional cities – Houston, Jacksonville, Louisville, New Orleans, and San Antonio – this year. These new cities are in addition to seven cities where we’ve already announced plans to launch mobile 5G this year – Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Raleigh, and Waco.

Looking forward to early 2019, we’ll keep our 5G momentum going and plan to introduce mobile 5G in parts of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose. From these 19 cities, we’ll continue to expand.

Over the weekend, in Waco, Texas, working with our key technology collaborators, we made the world’s first wireless 5G data transfer over millimeter wave using standards-based, production equipment with a mobile form factor device. Not a lab. Not preproduction hardware. Not emulators. And fully compliant with global standards.

”We’re at the dawn of something new that will define the next decade and generation of connectivity,” said Andre Fuetsch, chief technology officer, AT&T Communications. “Future smart factories and retailers, self-driving cars, untethered virtual and augmented realities, and other yet to be discovered experiences will grow up on tomorrow’s 5G networks. Much like 4G introduced the world to the gig economy, mobile 5G will jumpstart the next wave of unforeseen innovation.”

How we’re doing it

Our 5G deployment strategy will include using millimeter wave spectrum to deploy 5G in pockets of dense areas – where demand on our network is high and extra capacity and coverage is needed most. In other parts of urban areas and in suburban and rural areas, we plan to deploy 5G on our mid and low-band spectrum holdings. We’ve been encouraged by the performance of mmWave in our 5G trials and found that it performs better than expected and is successful in delivering ultra-high wireless speeds under a variety of conditions.

In addition, our foundational 5G Evolution technology is now live in more than 200 markets, reaching 400+ markets this year. 5G Evolution markets are locations where we've deployed the latest technologies that enable peak theoretical wireless speeds of at least 400 megabits per second** on capable devices.

For this weekend’s successful Waco activation, our engineering teams used a Qualcomm Technologies’ smartphone form factor test device with integrated Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X50 5G modem and RF subsystem and Ericsson 5G-NR capable radios connected to our virtual 3X standards compliant core. This helps us to ensure that when smartphones and other mobile devices are available to consumers, our mobile 5G network will be ready to go.

“This weekend’s call between a 5G base station in the field and a smartphone form factor 5G device brings us one step closer to commercial 5G networks and mobile devices,” said David Nash, vice president, Business Development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We will continue to work with industry leaders such as Ericsson and AT&T to help ensure consumers will be able to experience the benefits of commercial 5G networks and mobile devices.”