AT&T Increases 5G Service to More Cities, but Will It Matter?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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AT&T Increases 5G Service to More Cities, but Will It Matter?

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AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) will increase the number of cities that will get super-fast 5G wireless service to six. The 5G deployments, which all four major carriers plan to roll out over the next several years, are nearly as important as the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, to hear some industry leaders talk. He also founded the original American Telephone & Telegraph a year later.

The huge phone company announced:

AT&T plans to begin introducing mobile 5G to customers in a dozen cities this year, and today we’re adding Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C. and Oklahoma City as the next three identified cities for our buildout. These cities will join our previously announced cities of Dallas, Atlanta, and Waco.

Really large cities are notably absent.

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5G deployments will replace the current 4G generation of wireless technology used by most of the over 300 million Americans who have a wireless phone. The rule of thumb is that 5G technology is 20 times faster than 4G. The speed does not help voice services or texts, which are primary uses of wireless phones and computers. But 5G also will allow people to download video at blazing speed, which is among its primary benefits. However, the universe of people who use video downloads and want the fast process may be very limited.

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Regardless of cost, AT&T and rivals Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), T-Mobile US Inc. (NASDAQ: TMUS) and Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) have started to use 5G deployment as a way to steal customers from one another. The wireless market in the United States is so saturated that very few people do not already have service. All four have begun the multibillion investments for deployment, and hundreds of millions of more will go into marketing.

Another opportunity for both the wireless carriers and smartphone companies is upgrades to new devices that are compatible with 5G. That is if anyone wants them.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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