Today, AT&T announced that last night, it "completed the world's first millimeter wave mobile 5G browsing session with a standards-based device". That's big news, as millimeter waves can provide download speeds of up to 5Gbps, which will change the way that we interact with devices.
But the really big news is that AT&T says that it will have 5G by the end of this year, while most carriers are targeting 2019. The 12 cities that will have it this year are Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Raleigh, San Antonio and Waco, with 19 more cities coming next year.
The first device will be the Netgear Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot, which is what was used to complete the test last night in Waco, Texas. Unfortunately, this means that you still won't actually get 5Gbps speeds, since the devices that you're using it with probably only support gigabit Wi-Fi. But still, 5G has other advantages.
AT&T has been pushing its 5G Evolution service for a while now, which is really just 4G LTE carrier aggregation. Over the next year, we're certainly going to see various 5G devices, and various strategies from carriers implementing the new standards.
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