T-Mobile tackles the hard part about 5G mid-band build

With T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G buildout at 275 million points of presence (POPs) and a year-end target of 300 million POPs, the question is: How easy or difficult is it to cover that last 25 million people? “It gets harder and harder. And as a rule of thumb, I would say that it’s about 3 times harder for every 10 million that you add. So that’s about how hard it gets,” said T-Mobile President of Technology Ulf Ewaldsson. The geography of the US is what makes it tricky. Wireless operators tend to focus on the most populated and dense areas of the country when they roll out a new generation of technology. Then they pan out to the less populated suburban and rural areas. That’s the stage at which T-Mobile finds itself. Even without that last 25 million POPs covered with 2.5 GHz spectrum, T-Mobile is making a concerted effort to grow market share in smaller markets and more rural areas. T-Mobile is still waiting for the government to release the 2.5 GHz licenses it won in 2022's Federal Communications Commission auction, and many of those cover rural areas of the country.