What is T-Mobile’s strategy and timeline for nationwide 5G SA expansion?

Q: What is T-Mobile’s strategy and timeline for nationwide 5G SA expansion?

A: T-Mobile launched nationwide 5G SA on our low band 600MHz spectrum back in August of 2020. Since that time, we have expanded our 5G SA network tremendously and for the last couple of years have operated a nationwide tri-band 5G SA network with three and four Component Carrier Aggregation at low-band and mid band FDD and with our goldilocks mid-band TDD spectrum at 2.5GHz. We will continue to expand our 5G SA network in geography and spectrum depth and introduce higher order Carrier Aggregation.

Q: What was the most important criteria for successfully launching 5G SA so early?

A: In addition to relentless focus and drive from our technology leadership team, there were a few other factors that helped enable this success. A good amount of clear spectrum at low-band and mid-band that could be dedicated for 5G was very important. This way, we could offer a user throughput experience comparable to 5G NSA while avoiding all the poor performance issues with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing. Another important aspect was to facilitate live 5G SA network test environments early in order to let chip set and device OEMs test and enable 5G SA on all 5G devices. Practically speaking, all 5G devices on our network today are 5G SA capable. When most of the devices are SA capable, it is easier to justify allocation of dedicated spectrum for 5G.

Q: What was your migration path for voice services on the 5G SA network?

A: Voice over NR was not available from our vendor and ecosystem partners at the time we wanted to launch 5G SA, so we had no other choice then to use EPS Fallback for voice in the beginning of our 5G SA journey. It was not a desired solution, but it worked OK as a bridge solution until VoNR became available and mature. We put a lot of effort into co-developing and optimizing VoNR with our ecosystem partners and we launched VoNR on our nationwide 5G SA network in June 2022. Today VoNR is outperforming VoLTE performance on most metrics and in most locations.

Q: How will T-Mobile leverage network slicing in 5G SA? Are there specific industries or applications you’re prioritizing?

A: T-Mobile have been working with our vendors and ecosystem partners for several years to develop and refine network slicing and related solutions. We have been working with several industry partners to leverage network slicing to fulfil their special KPI requirements for new use cases. In October we announced T-Priority, the world’s first dedicated network slice for First Responders and we have multiple other opportunities in the works which leverage network slicing. We’ve also deployed network slicing at special events where lots of people are gathered causing high load on the network and slicing comes in handy in environments like this to ensure reliable service for critical operations such as point of sales, ticketless entry and video broadcast backhaul. To date we’ve deployed slicing solutions at MLB All-Star week, the KPMG Women's PGA Championship and PGA Championship and the 2023 and 2024 F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Q: T-Mobile is also leading the way in terms of 5G-Advanced. What excites you the most about this technology?

We are already halfway through the 5G journey, and by now the T-Mobile nationwide 5G Standalone network is very advanced already. We support network slicing, 4 CC DL Carrier Aggregation, 2CC UL Carrier Aggregation, UL MIMO, RedCap and other advanced 5G capabilities. 5G Advanced for T-Mobile is just a continuation of the 5G journey that we are already on. We will continue to drive our ecosystem partners and co-develop new R17 and R18 features and capabilities over the next several years. In addition, we already support AI solutions for the RAN to gain spectral efficiency, improve the user experience and enhance network performance.