T-Mobile US is running up the score with mid-band 5G deployments as the operator today hit its year-end target of 200 million people covered at least six weeks early. The carrier pushed mid-band 5G coverage to 185 million people in late October and expanded its footprint to an additional 5 million people a week later.

“We’re six weeks ahead of our goal, but we’re years ahead of where our competition is today on that mid-band rollout, and not just in terms of the footprint, but also in terms of the depth of the spectrum that's available to the competition in the mid-band space,” T-Mobile President of Technology Neville Ray said today at the BCG and New Street Research 5G Conference.

T-Mobile plans to put 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum to use across its existing footprint by the end of the year — a depth of spectrum that matches the combined mid-band spectrum holdings of AT&T and Verizon that won’t become available until January 2022, at the earliest. 

Verizon and AT&T last week begrudgingly volunteered to delay the commercial launch of 5G service on the C-band spectrum they licensed for a combined $68.9 billion after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a last-minute and ominous warning about potential interference with radio altimeters in aircraft.

The one-month delay, which could drag on further, simply allows T-Mobile to extend its nationwide lead on mid-band 5G. T-Mobile will expand its mid-band 5G footprint to cover 250 million people by the end of 2022 and at least 300 million people by the end of 2023, Ray said.

“By the time we’re at 300 million, our competition has publicly stated they will try and get to where we are today as T-Mobile,” Ray said. “So that’s a very distinct advantage and gap we’ve been successful in putting in place as we’ve moved through the last 18 months.” T-Mobile closed its merger with Sprint in April 2020, and that deal provided it with the foundational 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings that underpin its network strengths today.

Verizon previously pledged to cover 100 million people with mid-band 5G in 46 markets by March 2022, and CEO Hans Vestberg last month said the operator is on track to meet that goal. AT&T, following a shedding of misbegotten media assets, effectively doubled its mid-band 5G deployment plans to reach 200 million people by the end of 2023.

While T-Mobile completed its first wave of mid-band 5G deployments in about 18 months, it’s carving out two additional years to increase its mid-band 5G footprint by 50% to 300 million people. The geographic area T-Mobile will need to cover to provide mid-band 5G service to an additional 100 million people represents five times the landmass that its mid-band 5G network covers today, according to Ray. 

T-Mobile is also working to couple the uplink capabilities of its 600 MHz 5G network, which currently covers 308 million people, with the downlink capabilities of its 2.5 GHz network via carrier aggregation, Ray explained. This, according to T-Mobile’s internal testing, will extend the reach of in-building coverage, capacity, and performance of that 2.5 GHz layer by up to 30%, he added. 

“The network is being upgraded. We’ll be fully upgraded by the end of this year to support that carrier aggregation combination,” Ray said, adding that devices will start receiving software updates to support that in the first quarter of 2022.