What AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are buying up: The 5G battle between US carriers just got very interesting

While you probably never thought you needed to understand the intricacies of how cellular networks operated by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon work, some big news that affects those operations will have real-world impacts on the services that they offer and that we rely on. In every country around the world except the US, 5G networks have been built around mid-band spectrum because it offers the right combination of coverage area and width of data lanes over which our TV shows can be streamed, Instagram posts uploaded, worldwide web browsed, etc. Other industries (notably the old school, large C-Band satellite dishes – hence the name) had previously been assigned to use these frequencies in the US, so they’re just now becoming available here. The Federal Communications Commission just announced the winners of C-Band spectrum license auctions. Those results make it clear that the future of 5G wireless in the U.S. is going to be all about mid-band, just as it is in other countries around the world.What that also means is, despite all the hoopla that carriers have tried to make about the two other main types of 5G service, they will soon be reduced to more secondary “support” functions for 5G. Additionally, from a competitive perspective, it’s important to note that T-Mobile already has a huge swath of mid-band spectrum it acquired when it purchased Sprint. In fact, according to some reports, it’s a bit more than what Verizon and AT&T combined purchased via this auction. That’s why T-Mobile spent so much less and also explains why they still have a significant lead in available mid-band frequencies to use for 5G.