Sprint, the fourth-largest telecommunication firm in the U.S., announced it will release a 5G-powered mobile smart hub next year to "deliver multimedia and connected data capabilities in a compact design," the company said.
The device will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform and the Snapdragon X50 5G modem, and is a collaboration with HTC, a Taiwanese mobile device maker. Neither the release date nor price details were revealed.
The carrier plans to launch its 5G network at the beginning of 2019. It announced earlier a plan to release a 5G smartphone in collaboration with LG in the first half of 2019. The Sprint-HTC made smart hub will be the second 5G device that Sprint intends to introduce in 2019.
Cities including Los Angeles, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York City, Phoenix and Kansas City are on Sprint’s 5G rollout map.
5G, the latest data transmission technology, will be widely rolled out in the U.S. next year. The faster speed is expected to change how households access Internet. Verizon, for instance, turned 5G into a home internet service, replacing the current broadband service. Verizon 5G Home can deliver a network speed of 300Mbps on average, depending on location, with a peek speed of almost 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps), said the company. 1 Gbps allows users to download a 1GB file in eight seconds, while 300 Mbps should do the same in 28 seconds. Therefore, homeowners are not supposed to see problems streaming 4K videos with the 5G home internet.
Another carrier T-Mobile has a similar strategy. It plans to offer in-home 5G Internet with a 100 Mbps download speed, and will increase the speed to between 300 Mbps and 500 Mbps by 2024, after the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile.
U.S. homeowners don’t have many options in terms of broadband providers. But with the rollout of 5G and the entry of telecoms in the home internet market, users will have more choices for the source that powers their connected devices at home.