Sprint Shows the First Real 5G Coverage Maps (2024)

BARCELONA—Sprint's 5G network is coming soon, the carrier announced at MWC19 on Monday. And unlike AT&T and Verizon, Sprint will tell you exactly where.

The carrier will launch 5G in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City in May, followed by Houston, LA, New York, Phoenix, and Washington a little later, Sprint CTO John Saw said. He gave initial coverage maps, which we're sharing below.

As you can see, the initial service will cover a bit under seven million people across the nine cities. It's definitely center-city coverage, not yet stretching to outlying neighborhoods or suburbs. But if you believe Sprint's buildout promises, it covers significant parts of those cities. In LA, for instance, Sprint coverage will reach all the way across the west side from Santa Monica to downtown, as opposed to Verizon's current 5GTF network, which only covers neighborhoods very near downtown.

"When we say we're going to launch it in nine cities, it's not just for five customers, it's really for millions of customers," Sprint CEO Michael Combes said.

Verizon launched its 5G Home service in four cities last October; AT&T supposedly launched 5G in 12 cities in December. Neither company has produced a coverage map, although we hacked one together from a list of neighborhood names Verizon provided. Neither company appears to cover anywhere near the in-city area Sprint is promising, at least right now.

If AT&T and Verizon continue on their mysterious path, Sprint is going to burst out with the first real, citywide 5G networks in May. Now, a lot can happen between now and then; AT&T has said it may take its 5G network out of the witness protection program next month, and I've been hearing that Verizon is targeting early April for its first mobile 5G launches. But where are the maps?

Sprint is installing 5G on existing 4G cell sites, using 60MHz of its 2.5GHz spectrum for 4G and 60MHz for 5G, Sprint CTO John Saw said. Its 5G network will have equivalent coverage and wall penetration to its 4G network, unlike millimeter-wave networks that may be faster, but would cover shorter distances from a cell. The carrier showed a demo where its staff was getting 421.68Mbps in Chicago, which is higher than I would have expected with 60MHz of spectrum.

Sprint has announced three devices for its network: the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, the LG V50 5G, and HTC's 5G Hub, a sort of home/office/hotspot/smart speaker device. The LG V50 5G's dual-screen accessory may or may not come to the US, Sprint device exec Ryan Sullivan said; LG and Sprint haven't decided on that yet.

Is the G for Gaming? Or Google?

What will sell you a 5G phone? Sprint CMO Roger Sole thinks it'll be streaming games. Sprint made a partnership with Hatch, a game-streaming service, to preload the app on all of its 5G phones. Sole promised an "almost unlimited range of games" coming through the service. Although the current incarnation of Hatch has mostly mobile games like Angry Birds and Mini Metro, 5G might bring higher-quality PC and console-style titles.

I tried Hatch's streaming game service with a beach buggy racing game over 4G, and…meh. The latency on MWC's congested 4G network made the controls laggy. That's part of the point of using 5G, of course—much lower latency makes for a much more responsive gaming experience.

Hatch's current service is free with ads in Europe, or about $5.50 per month in Japan, Hatch director of communications Joseph Knowles told me.

Google Fi users will also get access to Sprint's 5G network, Jan Geldmacher, president of Sprint Business said. Sprint device exec Ryan Sullivan explained to me later that Google gets an option to take any of Sprint's verified handsets, so if Google wants to pick up the LG V50 or Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, it can.

Sprint execs speculated this might be the first 5G MVNO (virtual carrier) partnership, but last week, Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile both said they would be selling the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G on Verizon's network to their cable customers.