5G Frequency bands— Low band, Mid band, and mm-wave
5G 3GPP standard has divided the frequencies into two ranges. FR1 — frequency range 1 and FR2 — frequency range 2.
The industry on the other hand has come up with an easier division of the 5G spectrum in terms of low-band (coverage layer), mid-band (capacity layer), and high-band (high-capacity layer) respectively.
In FR1, although the frequency goes a little north of 7 GHz, it is still commonly referred to as a sub-6 band.
PRO TIP — LTE (including 3G & 2G) lives in FR1 i.e. sub-6 band.
Few key things to note here —
- FR1 could further be broken down into Low-band & Mid-band.
- Low-band 5G operates in a sub-1 GHz spectrum³
- Mid-band 5G operates in the band from 1 GHz to up to 7 GHz³ and includes the C-band, CBRS band, AWS-3 bands, etc.
- FR2 is real 5G with mm-wave speeds.
The major carriers across the US — AT&T, Verizon, & T-Mobile have come up with their own marketing names to differentiate between 5G frequency spectrums.
When using your mobile phone how would you know if you are on a 5G network? That’s simple right — your mobile internet icon should say 5G.
But, looking at the mobile internet icon, can you tell whether you are using a low band 5G, a mid-band 5G, or an mm-wave 5G — Yes and each carrier has its own mobile internet icon.
PRO TIP — For the low band the major providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon, all use the same 5G icon — “5G”
But if you are on a 5G mm-wave or mid-band network, the “5G” internet icon on the iPhones depends on your wireless provider. We can update the table above to show the marketing names and icons across carriers for various frequency bands.
I hope you find this article helpful and stay tuned for my next blog post.
Until then!
Happy Learning 😎
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