5G Bands in the USA




Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the USA does not require to deploy any particular technology at a given band, i.e. any band that is in use to provide mobile service can be utilized for any technology including 5G. So previous auctions are also applicable to 5G, for example in March 1996 (2.5 GHz), March 1998 and May 1999 (28 GHz) and May 2000 (39 GHz) and so on. Further details on auctions can be found here.

A table below contains data about bands that to be used for 5G during initial launches.

Frequency Band 3GPP Band Number Frequency Range Duplex Mode Operator Comments
600 MHz n71 DL: 617-652 MHz UL: 663-698 MHz FDD T-Mobile Bandwidth varies from state to state
28 GHz ? ? TDD T-Mobile Totally there are 200 MHz at 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands
39 GHz n260 ? TDD T-Mobile Totally there are 200 MHz at 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands
28 GHz ? ? TDD Verizon Totally there are 800 MHz at 28 GHz? It's 76% of the available 28 GHz band
39 GHz n260 ? TDD Verizon Verizon owns 46% of the available 39 GHz band
39 GHz n260 ? TDD AT&T
2.5 GHz ? ? TDD Sprint


AT&T also owns some frequency blocks at 700 MHz and AWS-1 bands that can be refarmed for 5G later. See AT&T and others LTE bands in the USA.

In March 2019 there is an ongoing auction of spectrum in the 28 GHz (27.5 - 28.35 GHz) and 24 GHz (24.25 - 24.45 GHz and 24.75 - 25.25 GHz).





© Alexey Anisimov, 2019 Valid HTML 4.01 Strict