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T-Mobile Starts to Roll Out its Invite-only Home LTE Internet Service

T-Mobile, on Thursday, announced that it is piloting a new in-home invite-only internet service on LTE, for the rural and underserved areas in the U.S., through a news post. According to the post, though the service the company intends to connect 50,000 homes this year. The service is only available for T-Mobile‘s existing users and will get the service through invites-only.

T-mobile
Image Source: wsmv.com

This limited service will cost $50 a month for its subscribers, and it is a trial for the company’s future cable internet business. Since it is about to launch its 5G service, soon, ahead of that, it is also the test for the company that it is capable of delivering the 5G services to its huge user base.

The new wireless technology will help the home users get rid of the broadband wires, and they will not have to roam around the router to get the full coverage. For now, the company is providing a 50 Mbps over the 4G LTE network, with no data caps, and after the launch of the 5G network, the speed will, eventually, be raised to 100Mbps.

“For now, only a limited few T-Mobile customers – the goal is to reach 50,000 households this year, less than .04% of U.S. households. But the New T-Mobile plans to cover more than half of U.S. zip codes by 2024 with the capacity for 9.5 million households to cut the cord.” stated the company in the news post.

Earlier this month, T-Mobile had also announced that if it fulfils its pending merger with Sprint, it will launch its 5G home internet soon. So the in-house 4G home internet can be a hint on that the company is ready for its 5G home internet service. By providing the internet service to the rural areas, the company is also trying to warm FCC decision makers up to the merger.

Currently, AT&T and Verizon are already bracing up for the launch of their home internet service, and if the merger succeeds, there will be lesser competition left for T-Mobile in the wireless service industry. The company also claimed that this new service will help Americans choose better internet service and will save billions of dollars.

AT&T’s 5G Network will Go Live in 12 Cities by the End of this Week

AT&T has been prepping for the launch of its 5G network for a long time, followed by a conference early this month, in which it demoed the speed of its upcoming 5G network. After such a long wait, AT&T has announced that its 5G network will go live on 21 December, in some of the parts of 12 cities in the United States. AT&T has become the first company to launch a mobile network based on the 5G standard, although Verizon had also launched its first 5G network earlier this year, as a home broadband replacement.

5G-ATT
Images Source: GlobalMediaIT

Currently, the network is only available to a specific group of people. It’s not like you can go to a store and directly buy the hotspot from there. The company is mainly targetting to provide the service to the businesses in the area. There may be a strategy behind the idea, as the company might be still testing the network, and would want to assure that the service is working well before it goes out to more consumers. So the company is approaching the targeted clients by itself.

AT&T is offering a free 5G hotspot service to those companies, and won’t charge anything until the official launch. The company is planning to launch the network in the other parts of the world by the coming spring and will sell the hot spot for $499. It is also going to announce the monthly plan for the 5G network starting with $70 per month for 15GB.

The cities which have got the access to this 5G service are New Orleans, Charlotte, Atlanta, Raleigh, Houston, Indianapolis, Dallas, Louisville, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Waco and the cities that may get access to the same service in the coming six months may include Nashville, Los Angeles, Orlando, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Johe and San Francisco. Even though AT&T will expand to those cities, here too, only some specific parts of those cities will be able to use the 5G network.

AT&T has also announced that it will launch two Samsung 5G phones in 2019, in the two halves of the year. The company is also offering tempting deals for the early subscribers of the 5G network along with free access to it for at least 90 days.