Sprint is finally putting their hands out as they have finally announced to launch their 5G services starting from May in four major cities of the United States (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City). To support the 5G services, Sprint is preparing up with a total of three devices. Two of them are said to be smartphones while the third one being something in between a hotspot and a set-top box. But how exactly is Sprint making their plans to stand out against giants like AT&T and Verizon? Let’s take a look into it all including Sprint 5G Plans, phones, network coverage etc.
Where will Sprint First Provide 5G Network?
As of now, the only confirmed places with optical coverage include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City. They will be the first ones to receive Sprint 5G coverage in the starting month, that is May. Other cities to follow on includes Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington D.C., but the exact time and month for these cities official 5G coverage launch is still unclear.
Photo Credit: Sprint
Granted Verizon has already pulled one over Sprint by being the one to first provide 5G services to Chicago and Minneapolis. However, Verizon’s coverage is limited to only certain tourist hotspots. Whereas, Sprint’s CEO, Michael Combes made a declaration saying, “first real mobile 5G in the U.S. with real devices with real coverage.” This will stand out to be the difference between them, and if Sprint pulls it off and provides a full-scale coverage, Verizon will have some serious thinking to do.
Sprint 5G Phones
Just like it’s competitors, Sprint also plans to bring the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G as the first device along with the newly launched LG V50 ThinQ. Both these smartphones are now available in South Korea through its carriers KT, SK Telecom, LG Uplus at a price equivalent to $1000-$1200. However, the modem inside these devices doesn’t support all the bands that the US carriers use to provide 5G services. So the experience on the same phone for different networks will probably be different too.
Along with these two smartphones, Sprint also has an additional HTC device which will like a hotspot providing the 5G signal to upto 20 nearby devices. This modem packs in the latest Snapdragon 855 which will enable its users to even the hotspot device’s power to play games or multimedia on a secondary display. On top of it all, this HTC device also works as a makeshift smart speaker. All of this is controlled using a 5-inch HD display.
Sprint 5G Plans & Pricing
T-Mobile CEO John Legere made a statement on the T-Mobile/Sprint entity,” the same or better rate plans for our services as those offered today by T-Mobile or Sprint”. Now the current plans from Sprint are not the best ones out there, so if it stays the same, then it might hurt Sprint in the long run. Their prices are lower at $60 per month, but it comes with limitations on traffic for video and audio streaming along with online gaming.
Verdict
As of now both Verizon and AT&T are way ahead of Sprint, but the whole coverage concept might incline people more towards Sprint.
