T-Mobile achieves record-breaking 5G speeds with Sprint’s spectrum

T-Mobile has just reached a milestone with its 5G network. 

Of course, this wouldn’t have happened without Sprint’s 2.5GHz spectrum and its partnership with Ericsson. The partnership allowed the wireless network to create a “16-layer multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) demonstration.” As such, T-Mobile was able to achieve 5.6Gbps 5G throughput under one channel, which was distributed across eight devices. 

What this means is that each OnePlus 8 5G phone received over 700Mbps from a radio that would otherwise only serve just one before hitting the tape. 

“Using a commercially available massive MIMO radio with 64 antennas from Ericsson and the OnePlus 8 5G smartphones T-Mobile sells today, 16 unique streams of data were transmitted --- each stream capable of hitting more than 350 Mbps. And with two data streams for each device, that’s 700+ Mbps for each smartphone, all using the same radio resources at the same time.”

T-Mobile is pretty confident with the results of its testing. A spokesperson revealing this news shared: 

“At scale, this technology means T-Mobile could connect massively more devices to the same cell infrastructure and still deliver blazing fast speeds to all of them without compromising performance and that means wireless companies will be able to deliver even better 5G performance to even more people.”

While decongesting wireless traffic is something that 5G hopes to accomplish, T-Mobile still has a long way to go before they can fully integrate the network of Sprint. But thanks to the merger- its mid-band acquisition seems to be paying off already.

“In simple terms, the test is significant because the technology will allow T-Mobile to bring blazing fast 5G speeds to more customers. In tech terms, with 100 MHz of total 5G spectrum in the demonstration, T-Mobile was able to achieve an astonishing 50+ bps/Hz in spectral efficiency. That is much higher than the single digit efficiency typically experienced today. T-Mobile expects to begin deploying this technology next year as they continue the goal of building America’s best 5G network.”