AT&T Activates 5G Service in New York City

AT&T today turned up 5G service in parts of New York City, joining T-Mobile US as the only network operators to provide some residents of the nation’s most populated city with 5G. AT&T’s burgeoning 5G network is now live in parts of 21 cities and the company says it’s on track to have “nationwide” 5G coverage during the first half of 2020. Much of that work is happening preemptively and in tandem with AT&T’s FirstNet buildout. “We’re putting up equipment that’s 5G enabled so when the 5G software for the core network is available, which we would hope later this year, certainly next year, we will upgrade a significant part, not all, but a significant part of our core network to 5G through a software upgrade,” said AT&T CFO John Stephens at Oppenheimer’s annual technology investor conference. “So we may have to go to the tower, but we don’t have to climb the tower. We may have to touch the computers at the base, but we don’t necessarily need a crane and all of that so it’s a very efficient upgrade,” he explained. “We’ll be nationwide coverage, 200 million [potential customers covered], by the middle of next year.”