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AT&T announces Chicago and Minneapolis as its next 5G cities

AT&T announces Chicago and Minneapolis as its next 5G cities

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Not to be confused with its (actually LTE) 5G Evolution network

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AT&T logo (STOCK)
AT&T logo (STOCK)

AT&T has caught a lot of (well-deserved) flak for its fake 5G Evolution network to the point that the company’s actual, real 5G network rollout hasn’t gotten as much notice. But that rollout is still happening, and today the carrier announced the next two cities: Chicago and Minneapolis, both of which should get AT&T’s real 5G network sometime later in 2019, via Engadget.

The news is about par for the course for AT&T’s 5G ambitions so far: the company technically launched its network in twelve cities late last year (Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Raleigh, San Antonio, and Waco), but there’s still no actual hardware that regular customers can go out and buy and use with the next-gen network. AT&T is promising phones for later this year — including two 5G devices from Samsung that could be announced as early as next week — but for now, it’s still largely a theoretical network.

Chicago and Minneapolis join Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose on the list of cities that AT&T has announced plans to add service to in 2019. So even if the actual offerings are a little slim right now, it’s clear that AT&T has ambition when it comes to 5G. Soon, we’ll get to see if it can actually start to deliver.