AT&T Starts Field Testing New 5G Small Radios Hidden on Street Lamp Post

Sophie Webster, Tech Times 26 February 2022, 08:02 am

AT&T is working on the next phase of its 5G plan. On Feb. 26, the telecommunications company began testing its new 5G small cell radios to be placed on top of street lamp posts for discreet distribution.

The new 5G radios are products of the partnership between AT&T, Ericsson, and Ubicquia.

AT&T 5G Small Cell Radios

Gordon Mansfield, AT&T's VP of mobility access and architecture, wrote in a company blog that the 5G cell radios are virtually unseen from street level, according to AT&T.

Mansfield stated that these new low and mid-band 5G radios can be deployed on street lamps within 15 minutes. He said there would no longer be any bulky boxes and massive wires.

These new products can help 5G blend in, and this is a good thing because 5G boxes are often a target of vandalism.

Also Read: FAA: AT&T and Verizon's 5G C-Band May Ground Medevac Helicopters; Wireless Service Starts Jan. 19

The small cell radios are not a replacement for the faster and visible mmWave antennas that can cover several city blocks.

However, since the new cell radios are powered by street lamps and are connected to nearby fiber, it could reduce the need to create more cell towers in cities.

Street lights have become a pylon for a lot of technologies in cities. By using existing infrastructure, technology like public Wi-Fi access points, gunshot-detecting sensors, and security cameras can be holstered on the poles. There are companies like Ubitricity that add electric vehicle charging to street lights.

The new cell radios give more reliable 5G data connections in cities without scattering city blocks' unpleasant boxes. This also makes deploying 5G to more underserved communities that do not have proper connectivity.

However, AT&T is only poised to start using the small cells, which were being trialed by the telecommunications company in 2021, according to AT&T Newsroom.

Mansfield wrote that they are now in the process of field testing and deploying commercially available units in several cities.

All these developments came after AT&T was forced to push the launch of the 5G network after it was reported that it messed with the plane landing system on airports.

Most Reliable 5G Claim

In 2021, AT&T and Verizon claimed that they have the most reliable 5G network in the United States.

However, the National Advertising Review Board or NARB recommended that they stop all the claims because they did not meet the right criteria to tag themselves as the most reliable, according to Fierce Wireless.

Earlier this year, T-Mobile also tried to claim the same thing, but just like with AT&T and Verizon, NARB denied the company to do so after failing to appeal to the review board and meeting their standards.

The NARB stated that the method did not take into account the completion of a data task as a metric of reliability, something that it says is one of the two main components together with the ability to connect to the 5G network.

The NARD stated that in the absence of convincing consumer research justifying a different result, the panel agreed with the National Advertising Division or NAD's conclusion that at least one component of network reliability analysis should be task completion.

Instead, the assessment of 5G network reliability in 2021 evaluated the speed and coverage using two different approaches, but NARB pointed out that mobile carriers usually promote networks on claims of coverage, speed, and reliability.