T-Mobile US executives consistently and enthusiastically herald the operator’s 5G prowess, but don’t expect 5G to become a bonafide era until 2023. 

The twilight of 4G LTE will hit in 2023 and “we’ll fully be in 5G consideration mode” among existing and prospective customers that haven’t adopted 5G by then, CFO Peter Osvaldik said during an interview at the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit.

T-Mobile claims it will cover 285 million people with mid-band 5G by the end of 2023. “We’re going to be at 90% of the population with that game changing mid-band spectrum as 5G opens up and becomes more and more of a consideration point,” Osvaldik said, adding that AT&T won’t be reaching the rural areas that T-Mobile plans to cover by that time. 

That combination of broad mid-band 5G coverage and the arrival of the 5G era will bolster T-Mobile’s position  as the only operator with mid-band 5G service in many parts of the country, Osvaldik said. 

“Just like Verizon had during the dawn of the 4G era, we are way out ahead and we have all the assets and the team necessary to maintain a significant, durable lead where it matters across the country in the 5G era,” he said. 

T-Mobile’s current market share in rural areas is in the low teens, but it hopes to increase its share to about 20% by 2025. The operator is also targeting a 20% market share in the enterprise and small to midsized business segment by 2025. 

“Mid band is the primary key driver of the 5G experience, both from a coverage and a performance perspective on top of what you do with extended range in your low band,” said Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s president of technology.

“The millimeter-wave story I think has been told and is now somewhat boxed away. Millimeter wave is a useful asset, use it in venues, in limited geographic coverage areas, high-capacity requirements, etcetera, but it can’t provide you broad coverage. We all know that — ding dong, I think that’s story’s kind of been told now,” he said.

T-Mobile is still on pace to reach 200 million people with mid-band 5G coverage by the end of this year, and 250 million people next year, according to Ray.

“This time to market thing is important. The company that steps out first with the next generation of technology in a meaningful and powerful way, if you look at history, that’s the company that leads in the segment and the era,” he said.

Ray also did some math during the interview at the virtual investor conference and claimed that Verizon will have less than one third, and AT&T will have just 15% of the mid-band 5G capability that T-Mobile will have by the end of this year. 

“Not only have AT&T and Verizon got a lot of work to do to catch our pace of deployment, they don’t have the real spectrum assets that we do. By the end of this year, we’re targeting to be there or thereabouts at 100 megahertz on that mid-band layer,” he said. 

“It’s not just deployment where we lead, it’s what you’re deploying in terms of radio depth and what happens with those radios on those sites. And we’re deploying way more spectrum than our competition in that process,” Ray concluded.