AT&T this morning switched on its 5G wireless mobile network in 12 cities around the country, making it the first U.S. provider to launch portable 5G service for wireless devices.

Like Verizon, AT&T is in no hurry to sign up new customers for 5G service. Instead, it will only be available “in dense urban areas” for a handful of businesses and consumers invited to sample the service for free over the next 90 days.

“This is the first taste of the mobile 5G era,” said Andre Fuetsch, president, AT&T Labs and chief technology officer. “Being first, you can expect us to evolve very quickly. It’s early on the 5G journey and we’re ready to learn fast and continually iterate in the months ahead.”

Because cell phones equipped with 5G are not yet widely available, AT&T will sell its 5G service with a NETGEAR® Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot device that will go on sale in the spring for $499. AT&T also intends to extract more money from wireless customers for its premium 5G experience. When service debuts, a 5G compatible data plan will start at $70 a month, including a 15GB data cap.

AT&T is not saying how fast its 5G network will actually be, only predicting it will be slower than the theoretical maximum speed of 1.2 Gbps, assuming nobody was using it. At an investor conference in early December, witnesses reported speed tests were averaging closer to 140 Mbps, which falls far short of the 5G Gigabit Hype the tech media has been breathlessly reporting.

AT&T’s launch switched on 5G service from selected city cell towers serving Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Fla., Louisville, Ky., Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Raleigh, N.C., San Antonio, and Waco, Tex.. Over the next six months, AT&T plans to switch on 5G-equipped towers in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose.

AT&T’s 5G service will use traditional cellular frequency bands, and will effectively look like an incremental upgrade from 4G LTE. In real world performance terms, expect noticeably faster wireless speeds, but nothing close to what Verizon is offering with its fixed wireless 5G network, which relies on millimeter wave frequencies to deliver much faster service. AT&T’s 5G is portable, Verizon’s is not (for now). AT&T executives have been repeatedly skeptical about offering fixed wireless 5G.

AT&T hypes its forthcoming 5G network into the stratosphere. (1:44)

Despite a strong economy, Verizon Communications will shed 10,400 employees and cut $10 billion in costs as part of a transformation initiative promoted by the company’s newest top executive.

“These changes are well-planned and anticipated, and they will be seamless to our customers,” said Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. “This is a moment in time, given our financial and operational strength, to begin to better serve customers with more agility, speed and flexibility.”

For Andrew Challenger, vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm that closely monitors corporate layoffs, Verizon’s willingness to let go of 7% of their workforce is an ominous sign of possible additional job reductions in the future.

Vestberg has advocated reorienting Verizon towards a potentially lucrative 5G wireless future. The estimated $10 billion in cost savings could placate investors on Wall Street alarmed about increased spending Verizon is likely to undertake to deploy 5G infrastructure over the next five years.

In October, Verizon offered more than 44,000 employees a voluntary buyout package and announced it would transfer thousands of current employees to Infosys, an outsourcing company headquartered in India. The voluntary separation package included up to 60 weeks’ salary, bonus and benefits, depending on length of service. This morning, accepted participants received word of their last day of employment, which will be the last day of this year or at the end of March or June, 2019. Verizon currently has 152,300 employees.

Challenger believes Verizon is likely to continue letting employees go as the company faces ongoing pressures on its landline and business service units and endures cord-cutting for its FiOS fiber to the home service. Challenger told CNBC the 44,000 workers who took Verizon’s offer likely made a smart decision. Companies that offer voluntary buyouts in good times can be a sign of likely layoffs when the economy slows down. With record low unemployment, the Verizon workers leaving the telecom company are likely to find new jobs much easier than those forced to look during a recession.

Verizon employees transferred to Infosys may be among the next to be targeted in future layoffs, according to Challenger. Verizon workers will be working closely with low-paid Indian staffers who may eventually replace them.

Workers who are assigned to train cheaper workers should keep their eyes open and resumes ready, Challenger warned.

AT&T continues to gently discourage the media and investors from comparing its 5G strategy with that of its biggest competitor, Verizon, suggesting the two companies have different visions about where and how 5G and small cells will be deployed.

“We’ve done fixed wireless in our network on LTE as part of our Connect America Fund commitment from the government. We’ve been doing that for two years. And so we know the technology. We know it works, and it works for the purposes intended, which is real broadband,” said Scott Mair, president of operations at AT&T. “The challenge is the use case and the economics, right? So where does fixed wireless work? We’re focused on mobility.”

Mair echoes earlier sentiments from AT&T’s chief financial officer who has repeatedly told investors that AT&T sees fiber to the home service as a superior offering, and one economically within reach for the company in its urban and suburban service areas.

Speaking on Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Broker Conference Call, Mair did not rule out 5G residential fixed wireless service in certain expensive-to-reach areas, but it is clear AT&T’s priority will be to bolster its mobile network, not invade the home internet access marketplace. Mair noted AT&T will deploy small cells to power its 5G services, but primarily to resolve congestion issues in high wireless traffic areas.

“If we’re there, we build small cells primarily for capacity,” noted Mair, adding the company believes “the mobility use case is probably the right place to be spending our time and effort.”

AT&T plans to target its first fixed or short-range 5G services on its business customers.

“We see initially enterprise businesses as being the area where the entry will be first,” Mair said. We’ve thought about partnering with a manufacturing firm, and I really believe that manufacturing is going to be a key capability. When you look at a factory floor, it’s real-time telemetry, real-time analytics. You have factories that now need to be more nimble than ever in terms of being able to reconfigure for product changes very quickly. Many types of workshops can also benefit from the value provided by a CNC plasma table software.

AT&T is also continuing to aggressively expand its fiber footprint, including the prospect of constructing fiber networks outside of AT&T’s traditional landline service area. But the company stressed it is building fiber networks in new ways that will maximize the company’s Return On Investment.

Mair

“So with our fiber build-out, fiber underlies everything we do, whether it’s wireline or wireless. And so fiber matters,” Mair said. “By middle of next year, we’ll be at 14 million homes passed and because we also have a deep fiber footprint, we’ll have another eight million businesses that we pass. That gives us 22 million locations that we can sell fiber-based services.”

AT&T’s fiber network planning has become very sophisticated these days. The more customers sharing a fiber connection, the faster construction expenses will be paid off.

When a business client contacts AT&T to arrange for fiber service, the company used to run a dedicated fiber cable directly to the business. These days, AT&T attempts to maximize the potential use of that fiber cable by routing it through areas that have a high potential of generating additional business for the company or traffic on its network. For example, a fiber connection furnished for a business might also be used to serve multiple dwelling units, like apartment buildings or condos, or rerouted to also reach other businesses that can be sold fiber services.

“I’m passing two [AT&T] cell sites that I’m paying someone else transport and backhaul for, where I can now put it on my own network,” Mair offered as an example. “I know where I’m going to be building small cells in the future. We can plan out that. We know where we’re going to be. I can route that fiber. So now I’ve optimized the route.”

Verizon and Samsung on Monday confirmed long-held industry expectations they would seek to steal a march on Apple by launching U.S. 5G smartphones in the first half of 2019.

The two companies said in a statement they would unveil a prototype, using Qualcomm modem chips, at the chipmaker’s annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Maui, Hawaii this week.

While Verizon is leading the charge to trial 5G in some cities next year, industry analysts say the higher-speed networks are unlikely to be widely available until the middle of the next decade.

Apple is engaged in a legal battle with Qualcomm that has led it to stop using its modem chips, and the Cupertino, California company is widely expected instead to use Intel modems, which will not be ready for production until late 2019.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported on Monday that Apple would wait until at least 2020 to release its first 5G iPhones.

The delay could make it easier for Samsung and Verizon to win customers who are eager to connect to 5G networks, which will provide a leap forward in mobile data speeds, up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks.

Qualcomm has also partnered with other smartphone makers who have committed to 5G phones for next year.

U.S. wireless carrier Sprint is also working with LG Electronics USA to launch a 5G smartphone in the U.S. in the first half of 2019.

Verizon launched its first commercial 5G service in October when its 5G Home offering went live in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matthew Ellis said last month that the company plans to target a broader audience for its 5G home broadband product following the adoption of global standards for the technology.

(Reuters) Reporting by Sayanti Chakraborty in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta