Alaska’s most populated city is now home to the northernmost 5G service in America. Ericsson and regional carrier GCI first announced plans last June to deploy 5G in Anchorage and beat their goal by a couple months.

“We have upgraded our wireless core and we intend to upgrade the vast majority of cell sites in Anchorage, Eagle River, and Girdwood to our five-band 5G New Radio (NR) solution by the end of the year,” GCI CEO and co-founder Ron Duncan said in a statement.

The operator claims it has invested “tens of millions of dollars” in the Anchorage area to deploy 5G, adding that its total investment in Alaska’s communications during the last 40 years  has surpassed $3 billion. Duncan described 5G as one of the biggest initiatives in GCI’s history during a press event in Anchorage last summer.

Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm, who joined Duncan and elected officials for the announcement last year, said GCI is among an “elite group of operators that are going to be early to launch 5G.”

GCI’s 5G network will provide a speed boost of at least five-times its previous performance, the operator said. Every cell site will eventually include five radios to transmit service on GCI’s low- and mid-band spectrum, leading to improvements in in-building coverage and increased usage of the operators’ metro fiber network, according to the regional operator.

“GCI was the first to bring 1 Gb/s internet to Alaska and now we are the first to bring 5G to the state,” Duncan said, adding that increased wireless speeds and coverage is now more important than ever amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz echoed those comments, adding that the pandemic “brings home how critical high-quality, high-speed communication is for our businesses and our families.” Anchorage is striving to transform itself into a “smart city” and 5G factors heavily into that goal.

GCI is working with Ericsson to upgrade all of its cell sites throughout Anchorage to 5G before the end of the year. The operator is also upgrading its network to support microcells and managed WiFi, and adds that lessons learned in Anchorage will inform its network-upgrade plans in other Alaska cities.

When the operator’s entire 5G footprint is deployed in Anchorage it will cover an area larger than Rhode Island, Duncan said last year.

Ericsson has snagged multiple 5G deals with regional operators in the United States. Last week the vendor announced plans to provide 5G network equipment to Kansas-based rural operator Nex-Tech Wireless for a 5G network that will go live before mid-year.