5G mmWave vs. Sub6GHz Explained

mmWave is kind of a pipe dream for most people on this board at this point

if you dont want to read you can go watch MKBHD's video on this several months back. He made it pretty clear for the layman.

quote:

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Sub-6GHz networks fall somewhere in between mmWave and LTE speeds. Sprint's Sub-6GHz network (which is now T-Mobile's), for example, has seen maximum speeds of about 200Mb/s. A good LTE connection can hit those speeds, but realistically, Sub-6GHz 5G is faster than most people will see with LTE, though not reaching those incredible speeds possible with mmWave.

OpenSignal in August 2020 analyzed real-world 5G speeds in multiple countries (using smartphones that currently support 5G), and the speed results for the United States might be surprising to those who are expecting major speed gains from 5G. Average download speeds on 5GHz networks were around 50.9Mb/s, compared to 28.9 Mb/s on LTE, and that's because most of the coverage in the U.S. is Sub-6GHz at this time.

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This is factually incorrect.

We are seeing speeds significantly higher than the so called 200Mbps.

How do I know this?

Ive only overseen n41 rollouts for TMO for the last year and a half.

We have seen at 4x2 MIMO 40Mhz n41 (2.5Ghz) ENDC with b66 real speeds up to 900Mbps (only limited due to back haul currently).

60 and 100Mhz carriers are currently being tested now.

We havent even begun to talk about n71 Macro sites being rolled out or future mmWave projects on tap.

In fact the big discussion across all carriers at the moment is Spectrum farming as LTE becomes the way of WCDMA. Obviously this is still very far away in terms of total removal, but as the competition heats up for 5G total coverage, these bands will become more lucrative.

Right under tower I've only seen speeds of up to 200Mbps on band 41. I hate that T Mobile is taking that away from Sprint though.