Facing pressure from an increasingly competitive wireless market, AT&T opened up about its 5G plans: It's aiming to field-test its 5G network in Austin, Texas, before the end of this year.
That's puts AT&T on pace with its biggest rival.
Verizon surprised the telecom world last year by saying it planned to start rolling out 5G by 2017 -- years earlier than industry experts had expected. AT&T initially resisted a me-too approach, declaring its rival's announcement as premature. The standards for what constitutes 5G won't even be set until 2018, the company noted.
But AT&T says it's ready to start sharing its 5G roadmap. It's working with Ericsson and Intel, and it will begin testing 5G in a lab this spring before testing it outdoors later in 2016.
AT&T expects that its 5G network will deliver speeds between 10 and 100 times faster than 4G. AT&T says that its new 5G network will also have significantly less lag between tapping a button and getting the network to play a video, download a song or search for a local restaurant.
With a network that fast and responsive, AT&T says that 5G will open the door to new wireless possibilities
New experiences like virtual reality, self-driving cars, robotics, smart cities and more are about to test networks like never before," said John Donovan, AT&T's chief strategy officer, in a statement. "5G will help make them a reality.