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Sprint launches its 5G network in NYC, LA, Phoenix, and Washington, DC

Sprint launches its 5G network in NYC, LA, Phoenix, and Washington, DC

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For a total of nine 5G cities

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sprint is announcing the next phase of its 5G rollout, and at an event in New York this morning, it added some big cities to the list: the service will launch in New York City, Phoenix, and Washington, DC today, August 27th, and it will launch in Los Angeles on August 28th, as the company promised back in February.

Those cities join the existing 5G coverage from Sprint in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City that the carrier rolled out earlier this year. With these additional cities, Sprint says it’ll have approximately 2,100 square miles of 5G coverage, which is a benefit of the longer-range but down-spectrum technology in the 2.5GHz range that Sprint is using for its initial 5G rollout.

Sprint’s 5g has a longer range, but it’s slower than Verizon’s 5G

As my colleague Chris Welch noted when he tested Sprint’s network earlier this year, the fact that Sprint isn’t using mmWave technology means that speeds are slower than, say, Verizon’s network. But Sprint’s network does work better indoors, and it offers far better coverage than the more limited Verizon network.

Sprint currently offers support for three 5G devices: the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, the LG V50 ThinQ, and the HTC 5G Hub hot spot. The company has also promised support for the upcoming Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G as well as the just-announced OnePlus 7 Pro 5G.

That said, the coverage is only set to hit parts of these additional cities to start. For example, Sprint promises that its 5G will be available from Central Park to the southern tip of Manhattan, but if you live uptown, you likely won’t get the speed. New York City’s coverage has the potential to be the most-used 5G network yet, with 7 million people covered by the new network.

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