The American multinational company AT&T is declaring a C band first, stating that it has deployed and finished 5G field tests calls using devices and a mobile test platform at locations in Texas, Detroit, Michigan and Plano. The C band testing is one of the crucial steps for deploying 5G network. Nearly all the telecom operators are eyeing the C band spectrum. The early adopters of the C band spectrum are Verizon and T-Mobile US. Verizon has also marked that it is working already to deploy 7,000 sites that will be fully functional when the first lot of spectrum will be available in December.
AT&T Plans to Provide 5G Network to 200 Million People by 2023
Talking about the C band acquisition, AT&T gained 80 MHz of C band spectrum nationwide. The telco plans to cover nearly 200 million people under the 5G ecosystem by the end of 2023 using the C band spectrum. Tony Seyfried, who is the tech vendor manager at AT&T, stated that the test strategies for the new airwaves are an intriguing project to work on for the benefit of customers and the entire industry. He also noted that the entire team deployed at the test anticipated what we would need to repeat a field test again.
AT&T RAN Team Developed the Test Procedures
The entire team of AT&T invested extra efforts for the 5G field test. While the RAN teams created the test procedures and Construction and Engineering (C&E) teams worked on getting the sites ready. Apart from this, the management office focused on getting all the necessary approvals required for the 5G project.
The teams in Plano and Detroit were part of the joint effort and competed against each other up to some extent to decide on who would take the initial call. In the end, the Plano team made the initial call and completed the first field test on April 22. On the other side, the Detroit team did their field test just after 10 days. Seyfried stated that the speed and agility of the trials were exceptional. The tests will allow the entity to implement the C-band even faster now.
