T-Mobile US’ 5G network on mid-band spectrum will provide “nationwide” coverage by the end of 2021, Neville Ray, the carrier’s president of technology, said today at CCA’s virtual event. 

The operator’s mid-band 5G network — which it began deploying in April, almost immediately after closing its merger with Sprint, and acquiring its coveted 2.5 GHz spectrum — currently reaches more than 200 U.S. cities and towns. “By the end of the year, customers will benefit from mid-band 5G in thousands of cities and towns across the country. We expect to have nationwide mid-band 5G by the end of 2021,” Ray said.

T-Mobile’s engineers are “rolling out 2.5 GHz 5G at a furious pace. Today, our run rate is already hitting 1,000 mid-band 5G sites every month,” he said, adding that the carrier’s recently announced multi-year agreement with American Tower will further ramp up those efforts.

The operator was the first in the U.S. market to deploy a “nationwide” 5G footprint on low-band spectrum in December 2019, and the first in the world to deploy a 5G standalone core in August 2020. The new timeline shared by Ray today coupled with T-Mobile’s unparalleled access to mid-band spectrum puts the company in a position to make similar market or industry-first claims on 2.5 GHz. 

These efforts fall under a $40 billion network upgrade that will continue through at least 2023, as Ray and T-Mobile CFO Peter Osvaldik detailed last month. Those upgrades will eventually hit more than 50,000 cell sites, push coverage deeper into rural America, and deliver fixed wireless to at least half of U.S. households within six years, Ray said.

T-Mobile also today revealed T-Mobile Ventures, which Ray described as a “multi-million dollar, multi-year fund that we’ll use to invest in early and growth-stage companies developing groundbreaking 5G products and services on the T-Mobile network.” 

The investment fund, which is focusing on edge computing, security, the future of work, and IoT, appears to be an extension of its 5G Open Innovation Lab that is cycling 15-20 startups through a 12-week program to deliver similar outcomes. Founding partners of that effort include Amdocs, Dell Technologies, Intel, Microsoft, NASA, VMware, and T-Mobile.