Around the world, countries are racing to establish 5G enabled radio towers. Cellular service provides in America have set up some towers around certain cities, but right now are only providing access for small corporate businesses.
However, Patrick Holland and other reporters from CNET have been given sneak peaks at the various 5G coverage, and what they are finding is pretty jaw-dropping..
Back in May, CNET's Jessica Dolcourt was loaned a Samsung S10 5G model and allowed to explore a select area of Chicago to test out Verizon's 5G coverage.. with the exception of inside the Verizon store, she was only able to test outside. She went to various locations downtown and ran some speedtests getting results ranging from 400mbps up to over a Gigabyte. The results were inconsistent but the surpassing 1gb did happen on multiple occasions.
A week later, CNET sent correspondent, Lynn La to Dallas, at the invitation of Sprint to check out their 5G coverage. She brought along her LG V50, one of only other phones to have 5G antennas. As she roamed the city, she discovered that Sprint had a wider range of coverage than Verizon, but it still wasn't that big of an area. And like Verizon, the speed results were inconsistent. But unlike Verizon, Sprints 5G speeds, while still fast, never got close to 1GBps, ranging between 100mpbs to 484mpbs.
Finally, yesterday Patrick Holland took another Samsung S10 5G equipped phone to Warner Bros Studio in LA at the behest of AT&T. Aside from being encouraged to wander around the Hollywood campus, Holland was blown-away at the speeds that AT&T's 5G carrier provided. It blew the competition out of the water!
Walking around a town square backlot at the studio, the CNET representative ran a dozen speedtest to check how AT&T stacked up..
"The takeaway? AT&T 5G Plus is faster than The Flash when he has to pee. I got speeds that were consistently over 1Gbps, often hitting 1.6-1.7Gbps. That's six times faster than my home internet." src
Out of the 12 speedtest that were run using AT&T coverage, 8 were over 1.4gbps with the top result peaking at a whoppng 1.782 Gbps! Lightning fast..
I know that 5G isn't all about blazing upload and download speed. Reducing latency to pretty much 0 is going to have tons of implications and possibilities. For now though, this gives us an inkling of what is coming..
And, while companies are quick to promote 5G capabilities, and cellphone manufacturers are racing to release 5G enable models, it's still unlikely that we will see widespread implementation this year.. 2020 though is a different story. Let's just hope it's done right..