Sprint, as well as its parent company SoftBank and tech partner Qualcomm, have revealed that they are pooling their resources and expertise in order to develop 5G related technologies, including the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) New Radio (NR) standard in Band 41 (2.5 GigaHertz) for accelerated wide scale roll outs of 5G networks. The three brands have also announced their plans to start launching commercial 5G services and even mobile devices by the second half of 2019.
It is generally known in the wireless industry that Sprint currently holds a considerable wealth of 2.5 GigaHertz airwaves (over 160 MegaHertz of 2.5 GigaHertz airwaves in the top 100 mobile markets in the United States). According to the major US wireless carrier, the 2.5 GigaHertz band is the low band for 5G service, and by virtue of having abundant supply of that spectrum, Sprint has an advantage over some of the competition.
The 2.5 GigaHertz airwaves owned by Sprint also utilizes TDD-LTE, which can come quite handy especially in data-centric types of technology, like Wi-Fi, and in unpaired channels. Through TDD-LTE, the mobile operator is in a good position to apply more airwaves and capacity to downlink versus uplink. According to a white paper published a few months ago by the Next Generation Mobile Networks Forum (NGMN), 2.5 GigaHertz is one of the most ideal bands for sub 6 GigaHertz 5G service.
Sprint had gone on record recently that it was making full use of Nokia made equipment in Band 41. And during the Mobile World Congress trade show held in February early this year in the beautiful city of Barcelona in Spain, the company went on to conduct a demo of its formidable MIMO, basically illustrating how the tech can be utilized in order to enhance cellular capacity eight fold, compared to today’s 4G LTE networks. By conducting that demo (together with Nokia), Sprint now holds the distinction of being the first ever wireless carrier in America to properly display massive MIMO for TDD-LTE airwaves with 64T64R, for both the downlink and uplink on any current frequency for LTE.
The race to 5G is fully on. Earlier this month, another major US wireless carrier, T-Mobile, had revealed its own plans of leveraging its newly acquired 600 MegaHertz airwaves in introducing a countrywide 5G service some time in 2019. T-Mobile also currently holds 28 GigaHertz licenses as a result of acquiring the MetroPCS brand.
