T-Mobile US once again beat its self-imposed deadline to activate nationwide 5G service. The operator, which has been battling for almost 20 months to merge with Sprint, says its 5G network running on 600 MHz spectrum is now live in more than 5,000 cities and towns.

The nascent network covers more than 200 million people spanning a geographic range of more than 1 million square miles including many rural areas, according to the operator. T-Mobile US was the last of the four nationwide operators to deploy 5G, but it has successfully leapfrogged all of its competitors with the first nationwide 5G network in the country.

T-Mobile US’ 5G network only covers about 61% of the total U.S. population, but carrier executives maintain that the network will soon reach near ubiquity if the merger with Sprint is allowed to go through. AT&T plans to activate a nationwide 5G network on sub-6 GHz spectrum in the first half of 2020, but it will also only reach about 200 million people.

Verizon hasn’t shared a timeline for nationwide 5G coverage yet, and Sprint, which has deployed 5G service in nine markets on its 2.5 GHz spectrum, is effectively in a holding pattern as it awaits the outcome of its proposed merger with T-Mobile.

“It’s a marketing win for sure against larger competitors AT&T and Verizon,” said William Ho, principal analyst at 556 Ventures. “T-Mobile has won the marketing war and title of the first U.S. 5G network.”

Customers will undoubtedly be confused by the revolving claims of nationwide 5G firsts — and ascertaining the differences between each operators’ 5G networks running on millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum and sub-6 GHz spectrum is a burdensome task. Some early 5G capable devices are only compatible on mmWave, which boasts high speeds but short distances, and others work exclusively on low-band spectrum, which is effectively inverse.

T-Mobile launched 5G service in parts of six cities on mmWave spectrum during the summer, but it hasn’t expanded its use of the high-band spectrum or shared plans to deploy mmWave in more cities. T-Mobile frequently minimizes the capabilities of mmWave as a limited strategy for 5G and criticizes AT&T and Verizon’s 5G networks, which exclusively ride on the spectrum thus far, because signals “can be blocked by things like walls, glass, and leaves.”

The operator’s network performance on 600 MHz is lower, in part, because its licenses in that band are more narrow. The spectrum depth of T-Mobile’s 600 MHz licenses range from 11 MHz to 50 MHz. Large swaths of less densely populated areas of the country are in the 31-40 MHz range, most of Southern California is in the 21-30 MHz range, and most of the Northeast Corridor is in the 11-20 MHz range. T-Mobile’s 5G network running on 600 MHz spectrum will generate roughly 20% of the peak speeds it’s delivering on mmWave spectrum.

Nonetheless, the reach of T-Mobile’s 5G network on low-band spectrum into rural areas is impressive. Low-population areas that are generally far removed from the latest network technologies are gaining access to 5G before some of the country’s most densely populated and modern cities. The most northern reaches of California, for example, are widely covered by 5G but San Francisco, San Jose, and Sacramento are not.

“The carriers have been over-hyping 5G for years now, setting expectations beyond what they can deliver,” said Neville Ray, president of technology at T-Mobile, in a prepared statement. “Meanwhile at T-Mobile, we built 5G that works for more people in more places…We’ll see 5G speeds follow the same path as LTE, increasing exponentially over time.”

Now that T-Mobile has laid the foundation and widespread footprint for its 5G network, much of its future plans hang on the outcome of the proposed merger with Sprint. The operator has been relatively quiet about efforts to virtualize its network and executives aren’t making bold claims about opportunities in enterprises on par with its competitors.

During an on-stage interview at MWC Los Angeles 2019, Ray said he is equally excited about the benefits 5G will deliver for consumers and enterprises. “T-Mobile’s business strength has been its foray into small and medium businesses,” Ho said. “The power to address enterprises will be in the form of the new T-Mobile as Sprint is further along on enterprise accounts, and products and services to address that segment.”

While T-Mobile has shared less details about its strategy for software in a 5G environment, it is on the path to SDN architecture, according to Ho. “AT&T and Verizon have much more work to do with legacy systems in their wireless and wireline lines of business. The challenge when a new T-Mobile emerges is to have both companies’ infrastructure move and integrate to a unified SDN.”