AT&T has provided an update of its live 5G trials, with the carrier saying it is planning to offer 5G devices to its customers by the end of 2018.
According to a blog post[1] by president of Technology and Operations Melissa Arnoldi, AT&T is using its current 5G trials to gather "mountains of data and insights" on what is working, what needs to be changed, why certain results are occurring, whether millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum is working for 5G, and how it can hit high speeds.
"We had a lot of questions when we started, and we're confident we have all the answers we need to deploy a mobile 5G network that works for people all over the country," Arnoldi wrote.
Through the trial in Waco, Texas, Arnoldi said AT&T was able to attain 1.2Gbps speeds over an mmWave 5G service to locations more than 150 metres away from the cell site, with latency of between 9 and 12 milliseconds.
Small and medium-sized businesses participated in the Waco trial, with AT&T saying it was able to support "hundreds of simultaneous connected users using the 5G network".
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, AT&T provided its small business participants in the trial with gigabit speeds in line-of-sight conditions at a distance of 900 feet, with mmWave signals penetrating through "significant foliage, glass, and even walls better than initially anticipated".
"Observed no impacts on 5G mmWave signal performance due to rain, snow, or other weather events," Arnoldi added on the Michigan trial.
Lastly, the 5G trial in South Bend, Indiana, made use of an end-to-end 5G network architecture, including a radio system and core, providing 1Gbps speeds in line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight scenarios, as well as "extremely low