Some of the first 5G phones were announced at the Mobile World Congress last week. Many of these phones are reportedly based on the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform from Qualcomm, which supports 5G with up to 100 MHz bandwidth in sub-6 GHz bands and up to 800 MHz bandwidth in mmWave bands.

Despite all the fuss about mmWave being the key feature of 5G, it appears that the first commercial networks will utilize conventional sub-6 GHz bands; for example, Sprint will launch 5G using the 2.5 GHz band in nine major US cities from May to June 2019. Sprint is using Massive MIMO panels from Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung. The reason to use the 2.5 GHz band is to achieve a reasonably wide network coverage with a limited number of base stations. The new Massive MIMO base stations will initially be used for both 4G and 5G. The following video details Sprint’s preparations for their 5G launch:

Another interesting piece of news from the Mobile World Congress is that 95% of the base stations that Huawei is currently shipping contain Massive MIMO with either 32 or 64 antennas.