T-Mobile unveiled a portfolio of 5G products on Monday with an aim to attract business customers and take market share from competitors Verizon and AT&T. Customers include an automaker, an airline, and a theme park.
According to Callie Field, T-Mobile’s president of a business group, the product bundle, called 5G advanced network solutions, will include three levels, ranging from a completely private 5G network to sharing space across a public network. Field declined to reveal the customers.
Despite the dominance of its more established rivals, T-Mobile, which has a larger portion of the spectrum that is perfect for 5G than Verizon and AT&T, is aiming to put a mark on winning business customers.
SailGP, one of its clients, is using T- Mobile’s private 5G in San Francisco, where latency was reduced by 50% compared to Wi-Fi while sending real-time statistics from boats traveling at 60 mph.
A private 5G network allows enterprises to avoid competing for bandwidth with others on a public network while also enabling data-intensive applications.
Private 5G is projected to be adopted first by ports, airports, warehouses, and logistics centers, with revenue from private wireless infrastructure expected to reach $8.3 billion by 2026, up from $1.7 billion in 2021, according to IDC.
T-Mobile is collaborating with Dell on “edge computing” technology for private 5G, but Field said the company could work with whatever vendor a customer chooses.
“Edge computing” helps in the analysis of large amounts of data on the spot where it was collected – a manufacturing floor or an oil rig – before it is moved to faraway servers, drawing huge IT businesses to contribute their knowledge.
T-Mobile has been increasing subscribers since its merger with Sprint and as it builds out its 5G service, in which Deutsche Telekom owns a 48.4 percent interest.
