At an analyst event on Thursday, T-Mobile revealed that its long-awaited 5G home broadband service will launch later this month, which it confirmed to The Verge. A 4G version of the service is currently in pilot testing with 100,000 households. By the end of the year, T-Mobile says it hopes to extend the service to 7–8 million customers within five years. There’s no confirmed launch date for the service yet, but we’ll know more later this month.
The company has been promising 5G-based wireless broadband since before its acquisition of Sprint, saying that the merger would make it possible to offer service that would challenge the dominant cable companies. Before the deal was approved, T-Mobile went ahead and started testing out the service with a limited group of customers.
The self-styled Uncarrier isn’t the only one testing the waters of fixed wireless internet. Verizon just expanded its 5G home internet service to ten more cities, though in testing last year PCMag found that actual availability in the cities Verizon serves is scarce. If nothing else, both companies seem plenty motivated to get 5G home internet up and running.