5G in rural areas bridges a gap that 4G doesn’t, especially low- and mid-band

The mmWave revolution isn't here yet, but the other parts of 5G are more important.

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[JustVisitingThisPlanet]

The lower bands are best chance and Tmobile's 600Mhz can do 100-200Mbps but not at greater distances from site (and may have interference issues if they try to infill/overlap 600Mhz). However they'll have the *capacity* to serve 50Mbps to many rural customers, which will be good enough for many. Better reach than mmWave and higher bands with decent enough performance.

 

[JustVisitingThisPlanet]

Any chance of a deep dive article from Ars on just how 5G makes better use of existing sub 6ghz frequencies?

Not a deep dive but from what I've read, 5G squeezes about twice as many bits per Hertz than LTE, maybe more with new revisions. So it would mean either double the capacity as LTE or double the performance as LTE within the same width of spectrum (carrier may tune somewhere in between). While you may or may not see higher performance on lower bands, in the long run it's really about extra capacity in same width of spectrum from carrier perspective.

On higher bands, the spectrum is so wide that LTE can also perform well if able to use full spectrum width, but 5G would provide more capacity for carriers than LTE would at same level of 'speed'.

Is why we should not be paying for 5G upgrades, which VZW attempted at first. 5G should simply be operational lifecycle budgeted upgrades, not treated as a mind boggling jump for consumers that justifies higher service charge.