AT&T to Begin Field Trials of 5G This Year With Speeds 10-100X Faster Than 4G LTE

AT&T has announced that it will begin field trials of 5G this year in collaboration with Ericsson and Intel. The company plans to work on 5G solutions in the lab starting in Q2 and perform outdoor tests over the summer. Field trials to deliver 5G to fixed locations in Austin will begin before the end of the year.

We expect 5G to deliver speeds 10-100 times faster than today’s average 4G LTE connections. Customers will see speeds measured in gigabits per second, not megabits. For reference, at one gigabit per second, you can download a TV show in less than 3 seconds. Customers will also see much lower latency with 5G. Latency, for example, is how long it takes after you press play on a video app for the video to start streaming on your device. We expect 5G latency in the range of 1 to 5 milliseconds.


“New experiences like virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities and more are about to test networks like never before,” said John Donovan, Chief Strategy Officer and Group President, AT&T Technology and Operations. “These technologies will be immersive, pervasive and responsive to customers. 5G will help make them a reality. 5G will reach its full potential because we will build it on a software-centric architecture that can adapt quickly to new demands and give customers more control of their network services. Our approach is simple – deliver a unified experience built with 5G, software-defined networking (SDN), Big Data, security and open source software.”

AT&T says it will offer compliant commercial deployments of 5G once standards are set. 3GPP is expected to complete the first phase of that process in 2018.

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