T-Mobile Blasts AT&T And Verizon Over 2018 5G Promise, Says It Will Be 2019 Or Nothing

T-Mobile is known for throwing jabs at its bigger competitors in the mobile carrier industry. This time, the Uncarrier is blasting both AT&T and Verizon for saying that they’ll be offering 5G this year. According to T-Mobile, it’s going to be 2019, at least. That’s also going to be the year when it will start offering its own 5G wireless connection.

AT&T and Verizon both announced at the recent Consumer Electronics Show that they would start offering limited 5G internet this year, VentureBeat reports. At the time, T-Mobile didn’t say anything. Now, the carrier’s CTO, Neville Ray is calling out their two competitors via a recent blog post.

Ray claimed that T-Mobile will absolutely be going toe-to-toe with its bigger rivals when its own 5G network rolls out in 2019. The Uncarrier basically wants to achieve nationwide access by 2020. A lot of this will depend on the 600MHz “low band spectrum” that T-Mobile acquired at a hefty price.

The CTO also could not resist accusing AT&T and Verizon of overpromising, saying that the former had “no tangible path” to making good on its word while the latter’s methods won’t serve 5G smartphones in the future. As abrasive as these statements might seem, a lot of experts are actually agreeing that installing 5G networks right now would be premature since compatible chips are still being developed.

In fact, analysts are forecasting that 5G-enabled devices will only start hitting the market in full-swing in 2019. With that in mind, a 2018 roll-out really would not serve a lot of customers and those that will benefit from 5G speeds won’t really get the full advantages promised by the technology.

It simply makes more sense to wait until next year to roll-out the wireless connection, as T-Mobile notes. Then again, the Uncarrier could have pointed this out without seeming too self-serving.