Barrons article about status of 5G

It was a momentous week for fifth-generation wireless tech. On Wednesday,
Verizon Communications
(ticker: VZ) turned on the
first-ever U.S. 5G feed for smartphones,
bringing blazing data speeds to a few fortunate folks. Like so much of 5G, though, the hype continues to outpace the reality. Verizon’s 5G mobile network
is limited to select neighborhoods in Chicago and Minneapolis. Even there, the 5G service is limited to one specific Motorola phone.

I had my own eye-opening, but limited, 5G encounter in Dallas this past week.
AT&T
(T) gave me an exclusive first look at a live, commercial mobile 5G network based on Release 15, an industry standard agreed upon in June. The demos took
place in a downtown Dallas park and at the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium in nearby Arlington, Texas.

AT&T’s network isn’t powering phones just yet, so this test was run off a 5G hotspot, or puck, as AT&T calls it. The device, the Netgear Nighthawk 5G Mobile
Hotspot, picks up the 5G waves and rebroadcasts them over Wi-Fi.

It isn’t quite fully mobile 5G, but it was enough to
offer a glimpse of the future.
I sat in that Dallas park—no wires attached—and received staggering connection speeds that blew away anything I get from a wired connection at home or
from my existing 4G LTE phone.
On my antiquated iPhone 6, I saw speeds of 128 megabits per second, up from 23 megabits on my 4G connection. I was about 120 meters from the 5G hotspot
during the tests. Newer phones such as
Apple
’s(AAPL) iPhone X and
Samsung Electronics
’ (005930.South Korea) Galaxy S10 ran appreciably faster. At the park, the iPhone X reached 379 Mbps, and the S10 checked in at 315. A Lenovo ThinkPad
T480s laptop reached 984 Mbps. (For comparison, my home broadband in San Mateo, Calif., comes in at 43 Mbps.)

I tried 5G in a less quaint setting, too: the Cowboys’ 105,000 seat stadium, where AT&T owns the naming rights. There the 5G speeds were even more impressive.
One laptop in a direct line from a 5G antenna reached speeds of 923 Mbps to 1.14 gigabits per second. Another laptop, positioned at a 45-degree angle from
the same antenna, was in the 806 Mbps to 818 Mbps range.

It’s important to note that all these tests are happening in optimal conditions. I was the only one using the Cowboy’s connection. Eventually, there could
be some 99,000 more. AT&T stadium is already equipped with one 5G antenna with at least a dozen more on the way, AT&T says. The company hopes to have a
fully functional 5G network in the stadium by the start of the NFL exhibition season this summer.

Thus far, AT&T is prioritizing download speeds, so the upload connections were no better than what I currently get on 4G. That’s a strategic decision—and
surely allows the carrier to promote bigger download numbers. Depending on future applications and demands of the network, AT&T could need to borrow some
of the download capacity to improve upload speeds.

John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications, told me that it’s hard to imagine the potential for all this speed. We won’t know until hardware and software
developers are able to use the connections day to day.

Samsung Austin Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, will begin testing this summer on how 5G can improve efficiency, safety, and security
at its 500,000 square foot Austin, Texas manufacturing facility.

The firm has established a 2,000-square-foot test area to see how 5G and the use of sensors can better track the performance of robotic arms for preventive
maintenance through real-time data. It also plans to use sensors to monitor the safety of its employees, upgrade security at the plant, and explore the
use of virtual reality in the manufacturing process. The tests are part of an “evolution” to determine killer business apps, Jonathan Taylor, corporate
vice president of fab engineering, told me in a phone interview.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys are brainstorming with third-party developers on immersive 5G experiences for fans in the 2019 season. “If you build it, they will
come,” Charlotte Jones Anderson, chief branding officer for the Cowboys, told me from her office overlooking the team’s practice facility in nearby Frisco,
Texas. “We just need to figure out what we’re building.”

Write to Jon Swartz at
jon.swartz@dowjones.com

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