AT&T tapped Indianapolis as its seventh 5G launch city, marking the city as one of a dozen set to receive the operator’s next generation mobile service in 2018.
The move will pit AT&T against Verizon, which earlier this month named Indianapolis as one of its own 5G targets for 2018. Though Verizon plans to lead with fixed wireless access (FWA), the operator said it will quickly upgrade to mobile 5G in early 2019.
Bill Soards, president of AT&T Indiana, stated the city was a “natural choice” thanks in part to a “local government that understands the importance of technology to fuel innovation and boost economic growth.”
In 2017, Indianapolis was one of the first markets to receive AT&T’s LTE-Advanced 5G Evolution service, which enables peak speeds of up to 400Mb/s. It was also among the first to get LTE Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) technology, which offers top speeds of up to 1Gb/s.
Indianapolis joins the previously announced 5G launch cities of Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Dallas and Waco, Texas; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. An AT&T representative told Mobile World Live in July mmWave 5G radios are already being tested, certified and installed in those locations.
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