Wait, What AT&T's 5G Launch Won't Include Smartphones
0Wait, What AT&T's 5G Launch Won't Include Smartphones,
AT&T promised to bring 5G service to 12 cities by the end of the year, but don’t expect any phones to support it when the faster wireless standard debuts.Instead, the company plans to roll out its 5G wireless service using a device called a puck, which is essentially a small, portable modem — a mobile hotspot of sorts.
MORE: 5G Networking: The Definitive Guide - Tom's Guide
“Getting the handsets at scale penetrated into the market will slow things down,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday (Jan. 31). “So that’s why we’re going to be deploying pucks in the first part of our deployments in these 12 markets. So it is a mobile solution but it’s not going to be a handset just because there aren’t going to be that many handsets available.”