AT&T has made 5G service available in 90 additional markets, including numerous counties that are quite sparsely populated. The AT&T 5G market adds also include a few larger cities, including Sacramento, Sarasota, Tampa, Chicago, New Orleans, Waco, and Seattle.
Among the newly served counties with populations below 10,000 as of the 2010 census are Boundary County, Idaho; Brown County, Kansas; Trimble County, Kentucky; Mineral County, Montana; and Concho County, Texas.
Spectrum Bands
The deployments apparently were made using lower-frequency spectrum, as the company now uses the term AT&T 5G+ for deployments in the millimeter wave band, where the company targets business customers.
Deploying service using lower-frequency spectrum enables the company to cover broader areas with fewer cellsites, although speeds are not as dramatic as in the millimeter wave bands, where the company has seen multi-hundred megabits per second speeds – albeit over relatively short distances.
According to today’s press release about AT&T 5G market adds, the company now offers 5G in 190 markets nationwide. As of last month, the company also offered 5G+ in parts of 35 markets.
The 5G speeds that a carrier can support depend, not only on the spectrum band used, but also on the amount of spectrum used. In Los Angeles, AT&T has seen maximum speeds as high as 126.2 Mbps using low-frequency spectrum, according to IHS Markit RootMetrics.
In March, OpenSignal measured average AT&T 5G speeds at 59.3 Mbps in the low-frequency bands.
A full list of the 90 AT&T 5G market adds can be found in this press release.
