Sprint finally jumped on the 5G bandwagon by announcing that it will deploy the technology commercially in late 2019.

There are few details on the deployment. In a press release Sprint said it will work with Japan’s SoftBank, which owns more than 80 percent of Sprint, on the 5G launch.  It will also work with Qualcomm to develop technology based upon the 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) standard for Band 41 in the 2.5 GHz spectrum.

Until now, Sprint has been pretty low-key about its 5G deployment plans. The company did conduct a 5G trial about a year ago in conjunction with the 2016 Cap America Centenario soccer competition in Santa Clara, California.

That trial used equipment from Nokia in the 73 GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) band to stream 4K video at speeds of more than 2 Gb/s. Sprint also worked with startup VideoStitch's virtual reality engine to demonstrate the low latency of the network.

More recently Sprint has been more vocal about its work with Nokia on what the vendor is calling 4.9G technology.  At the 2017 Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, in March, Sprint and Nokia demonstrated 3-D beamforming software combined with Nokia’s AirScale massive multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) adaptive antenna. That demonstration also occurred in the 2.5 GHz Band 41.