TechTheDay

5G technology is almost upon us. This means farther-reaching, stronger signals, and faster speeds. Recently Qualcomm announced that they’re teaming up with the phone manufacturers in China to start their 5G Pioneer Initiative. The plan is for these companies to purchase from Qualcomm parts that are required for 5G capabilities and is targeting as early as 2019 to launching the first batch of 5G capable phones. Xiaomi and Lenovo are among the companies that partnered up with Qualcomm. While Qualcomm is teaming up with China, Verizon is going to launch their own campaign to aim for 5G technology race’s first place trophy by deploying 5G wireless broadband to 5 states in the US around July this year.

No doubt that the 5G race is on. But as Qualcomm and Verizon prepare their companies, another company comes into the race and declares that they, too, will be targeting 2019, next year, as the year that they will be the first company to provide a 5G network for commercial use.

Sprint And 5G

This is what Marcelo Claure, Sprint Corporation CEO has announced in a conference call last Friday. Confident that they will be the first, the 4th largest wireless Internet provider in the US has announced their goal to build US’ very first mobile 5G network. The target date is 2019, the same date as Qualcomm’s and Verizon, just one year earlier than the initial estimates of experts regarding the availability of 5G technology to the commercial market. The company believes that they have what it takes to succeed in the race.

Mr. Claure notes: that they are excited more than ever in terms of placing Sprint back at technology’s forefront. Sprint is also collaborating with Qualcomm in their plans, noting that they will use the company’s 5G compatible chipsets to create the network and team up with phone makers to release devices that are 5G compatible.

This isn’t the first time Claure made a statement like this. In 2015 he said that Sprint would be the US’ top network provider in two years, but right now, it is at the 4th place when it comes to the rankings. The very confident remark came about because Sprint was doing quite well and is growing rapidly. But last year the company’s growth stubbed its toe after T-Mobile walked away from a merger deal with Sprint when the two companies failed “to find mutually agreeable terms.”

Nonetheless, Claure is optimistic that his company, focusing on upgrading their systems and using newer technologies will help them make the quick switch to 5G tech by investing more in upgrades. With their move to 5G, Claure is confident that this will allow them to charge their customers more, especially those on their unlimited data plans.

The 5G Race

Verizon, AT & T and Sprint have all targeted 2019 as the year to launch 5G networks in the US. Originally, experts said that the earliest we can expect 5G was in 2020 although it seems now that companies are trying to prove them wrong in an effort to be the first to provide 5G services. The race started last year in November when Verizon made the announcement of launching a 5G service by the second half of this year to a select 5 US cities. In the CES 2018 last month it was AT & T who made an announcement expressing their interest to do the same, aiming at the same date.

Of course, this means that the testing period for 5G technology has finished: Version was able to complete the trials made in 2016 and AT & T’s trials in an Intel Office in 2016 probably was a success as well. No news about any known testing made by Sprint, however, and it feels like Sprint is just bandwagoning in response to Verizon and AT & T.