T AT&T Inc

By Drew FitzGerald 

Top U.S. carriers are taking split paths, both technically and geographically, through the country as they plot out the upgrade of their wireless networks.

T-Mobile US Inc. said it plans to launch fifth-generation, or 5G, service across 30 cities in the fourth quarter, hitting urban centers in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Dallas first.

That last selection could ruffle feathers at rival AT&T Inc., which picked its headquarters in Dallas along with suburb-heavy swaths of Waco, Texas, and Atlanta for its early 5G service rollout.

T-Mobile said its strategy would first target cellphone users rather than businesses to better align with its customer base.

"This race to be first at something, that's not really relevant," T-Mobile technology chief Neville Ray said Tuesday in an interview, a jab at competitors that plan to offer 5G service this year before phones and engineering standards are finished. He said he hopes the first phones that can use the high-bandwidth standard will be ready by early 2019, though T-Mobile's network will get the upgrades sooner.

Sprint Corp. earlier this week said it would prepare its infrastructure in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles with "5G-like capabilities" that should give cellphone users faster internet connections. But it won't have full 5G service, with its high speed connections, until the first half of next year.

Verizon Communications Inc. said earlier this year it will try out the technology on home-internet users in Sacramento, Calif., before expanding to other cities and launching 5G mobile service.

Each company's upgrade plans were on display here at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress, an annual gathering of the telecom companies from around the world. On Monday, the top U.S. telecom regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, told the conference he planned to auction two chunks of high-frequency airwave licenses this fall to accelerate the development of 5G services.

U.S. telecom executives are often eager to show how their engineers are bringing innovation to their service, though analysts have questioned how much they can spend on a technology that has yet to demonstrate its customer base.

Bond-rating service Moody's warned in September that the companies' basic plans could cost tens of billions of dollars apiece. That is partly because high frequency millimeter waves, which carry more data, also demand more wireless equipment at shorter intervals.

"Each carrier is crafting its 5G strategy to meet its individual requirements and affordability," Moody's analyst Mark Stodden said. "But in the end, we think the cost of a dense millimeter wave 5G network is too high for a full national overlay, and estimate it will only reach about half of the U.S. population."

Glenn Lurie, chief executive of telecom software provider Synchronoss Inc., said the build out could cost even more, especially if companies find it expensive getting permission from local governments to add more gear. He said that investment is ultimately necessary but won't come cheap.

"Anyone who's telling you 5G is not going to be expensive is wrong," Mr. Lurie said.

Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 28, 2018 09:47 ET (14:47 GMT)

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