These Cities Get 5G First From AT&T

This morning at AT&T Spark, the mobile data company named a bunch of cities to which it planned to bring 5G data speeds. This comes on top of news that AT&T deployed its first mobile 5G cell site and expanded its 5G reach from its first 7 cities to an additional 5, all inside the year 2018. Come 2019, AT&T's reach with 5G will spread to a bunch more cities across the United States.

Cities that've previously had 5G announcements for deployment from AT&T include Houston Texas, Jacksonville Florida, Louisville Kentucky, New Orleans Louisiana, and San Antonio Texas. New cities announced today include Atlanta Georgia, Charlotte North Carolina, Dallas Texas, Indianapolis Indiana, Oklahoma City Oklahoma, Raleigh North Carolina, and Waco Texas.

Yes, in case you were wondering, AT&T is indeed plopping one whole heck of a lot of 5G inside the borders of the state of Texas. And yes, AT&T's headquarters are indeed located in Texas, too. Dallas Texas, as it were. It only makes sense that they'd extend their tentacle-like arms from the head of the beast.

Cities that'll be getting some form of 5G or another in the year 2019 include the following. Las Vegas Nevada, Orlando Florida, Nashville Tennessee, and several places in California. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose are all on the list for 5G in 2019.

These city name announcements do not mean all people will have access to 5G data speeds in said cities instantly. In fact, AT&T doesn't guarantee that even the entirety of each of these cities will have the potential to get 5G data, even if they had a device with which it could be accessed. It was only this past weekend that AT&T "made the world's first wireless 5G data transfer over millimeter wave using standards-based, production equipment with a mobile form factor device."

AT&T also let loose a bit of info on the hardware that'll access 5G first. According to their release today, "To help us build our mobile, nationwide 5G network, we've selected Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung as our technology suppliers. Working with these two suppliers, we've already started deploying 3GPP Release 15 compliant equipment in a handful of our early 5G cities."

AT&T 5G Technology Supplier Partners:

• Ericsson (not phones, more on their side of the equation)

• Nokia (could be phones, could be routers, etc)

• Samsung (could be phones, could be routers, etc)

We know that Verizon's chosen their horse in the running towards 5G, now it's time for AT&T to drop a model. Let's hope it something new and exciting, shall we?

UPDATE: A quote from Qualcomm gives us some sort of clue: "This weekend's call between a 5G base station in the field and a smartphone form factor 5G device brings us one step closer to commercial 5G networks and mobile devices," said David Nash, vice president, Business Development, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "We will continue to work with industry leaders such as Ericsson and AT&T to help ensure consumers will be able to experience the benefits of commercial 5G networks and mobile devices."

That's not necessarily any sort of device that'll be available to end-users. That's more of a Qualcomm tester device meant for the SoC manufacturer to test its own innards. This is just before a phone name brand picks it up – but we'll see that soon!