The assets T-Mobile US is due to gain from its acquisition of Sprint has changed since the deal was first announced 15 months ago, but the combined company will have formidable holdings in spectrum and market positioning to pounce on burgeoning opportunities around 5G. The operator also appears to be on track for nationwide 5G coverage sometime next year.

Even after agreeing to divest some of Sprint’s assets to garner approval from the Department of Justice, T-Mobile US walks away with almost everything it wanted from the deal. “It’s a good deal for them. They really wanted to jump through all the hoops because look what they get: low band, mid band and then they’ve spent some in the millimeter wave band,” said Lynnette Luna, principal analyst at GlobalData Technology, about T-Mobile US' now more robust spectrum holdings post-deal. “That’s what you want. You want the three different bands to make a holistic 5G network, which none of their competitors have now.”

That trio of spectrum bands puts T-Mobile US in a leadership position on 5G, but how and how fast it rolls out that spectrum for 5G will determine how long it maintains a lead, Luna explained. A network riding entirely on 600 MHz would be a slower 5G network and “probably not that huge of a showcase or bump up in speeds and latency,” she said.

“But once you can get that 2.5 [GHz] and 600 [MHz] working together, and then layer the millimeter wave on top, that’s the whole vision of 5G — those three bands working together. So we’ll see how fast they can get that out,” Luna said.

The network operator was the last of the four nationwide carriers to deploy 5G services, and it’s strategy has shifted along the way. Although it has aggressively promoted its low-band spectrum holdings and criticized AT&T and Verizon for initially deploying 5G on millimeter wave spectrum, T-Mobile US opted to rely on similar high-band spectrum for its initial 5G launch just the same.

T-Mobile US walked back on its earlier plans because it wanted to prove its 5G networking prowess and didn’t want to lose any more ground to its competitors, according to Luna. Its 5G network still isn’t where T-Mobile US hoped it would be by now, and 600 MHz capable devices won’t be available until later this year. “That wasn’t really the deployment they wanted,” Luna said.

“I don’t feel like any of their competitors are way ahead of them or anything, so they can afford to wait to roll out. I’m not sure how much of a race it really is. The handsets are really expensive and coverage is pretty minimal,” she explained. “The gaming factor’s devices that will work with [600 MHz spectrum], so that’s what they’re waiting for.”

Steve Vachon, telecom analyst at Technology Business Research, also considers 600 MHz spectrum to be at the “foundation” of T-Mobile’s 5G strategy. “The coverage range provided by the licenses will enable the operator to provide nationwide 5G coverage in 2020,” he wrote in a research note.

When 600 MHz capable devices are commercially available, T-Mobile plans to upgrade its existing 600 MHz sites to 5G via a software update. The operator recently completed 5G data call tests in the lab and the field, claiming to be the “world’s first low-band 5G data session on a commercial 5G modem.” The operator is working with Ericsson and Nokia on its entire 5G build.

While T-Mobile is leading with millimeter wave and 600 MHz spectrum for 5G, Luna expects the operator to be just as aggressive on mid-band spectrum deployments when it gains ownership of Sprint’s spectrum. “The mid-band spectrum is the holy grail right now because it provides faster data speeds and also a better coverage area,” she said.

Sprint has deployed 5G services in five metropolitan areas to date on its mid-band spectrum and the coverage radius of its initial deployments is significantly larger than those of its competitors. Sprint claims to have the “largest initial 5G coverage footprint in the United States” and T-Mobile has big plans for that asset going forward.

“Gaining Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum, if the merger is approved, will provide T-Mobile’s greatest opportunity for 5G revenue generation,” Vachon writes. “The balance of coverage range and speed enabled by the mid-band spectrum would play a pivotal role in supporting T-Mobile’s planned residential broadband service.”