What are the three bands of 5G?

High-band spectrum refers to frequencies typically above 6 GHz in bands that are not used for mobile wireless service today . Thanks to significant research and development, however, we can now start to use high-band spectrum above 24 GHz, known as “millimeter wave,” for mobile broadband.

The fastest 5G speeds would be in the mmWave bands and can reach 4 Gbit/s with carrier aggregation and MIMO. Sub-6 GHz 5G (mid-band 5G), by far the most common, will usually deliver between 100 and 4,400 MBit/s but will have a much further reach than mmWave, especially outdoors.

Low-band 5G operates on some of the same frequencies as 4G, delivering slightly faster speeds —think 50–60 Mbps—over long distances. It will work best in rural areas where people are more spread out and you can provide service with a handful of cellular towers.

5G high-band spectrum delivers super-fast speeds over short distances . The third bucket of spectrum where wireless operators are deploying 5G is in the millimeter wave spectrum. This is very high on the spectrum chart in the 24 GHz band and higher.

The high-band provides a significant opportunity for very high throughput services for xMBB, localized deployments and low latency use cases , e.g. industrial IoT, venues, etc, both for indoor and outdoor deployments. Fixed wireless access (FWA) will also benefit from these higher bands in terms of capacity.