Millimeter-wave 5G will never scale beyond dense urban areas, T-Mobile says

While all four major nationwide carriers in the US have overhyped 5G to varying degrees, T-Mobile made a notable admission about 5G's key limitation. T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray wrote that millimeter-wave spectrum used for 5G "will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments." That would seem to rule out the possibility of 5G's fastest speeds reaching rural areas or perhaps even suburbs. Ray wrote his blog post primarily to complain about AT&T and Verizon claiming to be the first carriers to offer 5G, so his statement about high-frequency limitations was made partly to explain why T-Mobile hasn't yet launched 5G. T-Mobile intends to use millimeter-wave spectrum to provide "massive capacity over a very small footprint," Ray wrote. "It holds big promise for speed and capacity in dense urban areas and venues where large numbers of people gather." But low- and mid-band spectrum will still be needed to cover wider areas with 5G, he wrote.