Earlier this year, T-Mobile finalized its merger with Sprint establishing the New T-Mobile and readying itself to deploy its powerful and transformative 5G network nationwide. New T-Mobile officials are now sharing the details of how they plan to execute their robust plan.
According to the newly formed provider, rollout efforts are in motion even while simultaneously navigating COVID-19. T-Mobile has been busy installing 2.5GHz transmission radios (∼1000 per month) on existing cell towers, with plans to increase pace during the coming summer months. The Un-carrier is also actively engaging in discussions with other tower companies to assist their plans for major metropolitan areas. The goal, to quickly install 2.5GHz radios on nearly 30,000 towers across these highly populated locations. According to Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s network chief, “So far so good. We are ramping up in this [pandemic] environment, not actually slowing down.”
The Un-carrier is currently positioned to increase its macro cell towers from roughly 65,000 to ultimately 85,000 nationwide; numbers previously alluded to during initial merger talks in 2018. They’ll also decommission an unspecified number of unnecessary Sprint cell towers in the process.
T-Mobile’s buildout will not be limited to lowband 600MHz and midband 2.5GHz spectrum licenses only. They recently secured 2K+ highband, mmWave licenses during FFC auctions held earlier this year. Further still, T-Mobile CEO, Mike Sievert says another $60 million is earmarked for spending over the next five years to complete their “layer cake” approach. A three-layer approach; a lowband spectrum layer for coverage, a midband spectrum layer for power, and a mmWave spectrum layer for speed.