From PC Mag: T-Mobile's 5G has become unshackled. Today the carrier announced that its 600MHz low-band 5G network has been kicked into standalone mode, vastly expanding its 5G coverage and bringing it to many small towns and more rural areas.
But this significant technical feat may not bring major consumer advantages because T-Mobile isn't using a lot of airwaves for its rural 5G network.
Until now, the world's 5G networks have been "NSA," or non-standalone. That means a 5G network needs a 4G network to establish and negotiate its connections. So the 5G network can't have greater range or device capacity than the 4G network it's "hung" on, because the 4G network operates the control channel. T-Mobile's 600MHz network was hung on its mid-band AWS network, so the carrier couldn't have 5G coverage where it didn't have mid-band coverage.
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