The first set of 5G waves to hit the U.S. are uninspiring and haven’t made much of an impact to date, Neville Ray, president of technology at T-Mobile US, said at this week's Mobile Future Forward event.

“We celebrated some 5G launches —  T-Mobile didn’t, others did —  but they’ve proven to be pretty meaningless if we’re honest with ourselves,” he said. 

Ray’s comments effectively downplay or otherwise ignore T-Mobile’s steady stream of 5G proclamations — starting with its low-band 5G deployment in December 2019, it’s more recent spate of mid-band 5G rollouts, and the world’s first 5G standalone (SA) core deployment, but framing it against a national backdrop, he contends that 5G is a mostly lackluster experience in the U.S. today. 

It was a rare bit of candor from a mobile operator executive charged with upgrading its network to 5G, but Ray is even more wont to point to the opportunities that are yet to come. “I’ve been in all the Gs. I’ve got one more G in me,” he said.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, 5G really hasn’t had any real impact in the U.S. materially to date," Ray said. "The networks are still storming and forming.”

He added that with increased investment, improvements in regulation and policy, and greater innovation among U.S.-based companies, the mobile industry can start delivering powerful 5G experiences in the U.S. before other nations.

“The real and meaningful 5G is only going to start to come as we see mid-band (spectrum) rolling out,” he said.

On that front, Ray is up to his neck, as he puts it. “We’re now moving at a very fast pace, and we’re able today to upgrade north of 2,500 sites a month, which is a hell of a pace," he said. "We have over 100,000 sites in this network but we don’t have to upgrade all of them, and we will lose some and generate synergies.”

The operator is poised to spend $40 billion upgrading its network infrastructure during the next three to four years, spanning a footprint of at least 50,000 cell sites, Ray said at an investor conference last month. 

Those activities will enable operators to move out of the 4G LTE era and drive a more aggressive pace of 5G services that start to facilitate the use cases, benefits, and outcomes frequently espoused by the industry at large, he claimed.

While the U.S. was first with widespread 4G LTE capabilities, it has fallen behind other countries on 5G network deployments, according to Ray.

“We continue to need help on the regulatory front because it still takes us way too long and it’s still too much of a battle with many jurisdictions across the country who are screaming for the services we bring, but fight us tooth and nail to prevent us from installing the infrastructure,” Ray said. “We lose in the U.S. because of what we face at a state and local level often on site and policy.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is embarking on a series of mid-band spectrum auctions following a flurry of millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum auctions, but those activities are late, he said. Widespread 5G deployments in recently auctioned C-Band spectrum likely won’t occur for another three to four years, according to Ray.

“The U.S.’ natural ability to lead in 5G as it did in LTE has absolutely been challenged," the exec added.