On September 22, Beijing time, Comcast, the largest radio and television cable network operator in the United States, announced that it will build its own 5G wireless network, which will adopt two major frequency bands, one is the CBRS frequency band, and the other is the 600MHz frequency band.
This makes Comcast the first broadcast and cable TV network operator in the world to build a 5G wireless network in the 600MHz frequency band. This is Comcast’s decision after its fixed-line business struggled.
Comcast purchased wireless spectrum earlier but has never built its own wireless communication network. In 2016, the operator spent $1.7 billion on the purchase of 600MHz spectrum licenses, covering about 155 million POPs, whose spectrum width averaged about 10 MHz in each SEC.
“Comcast has no plans to build a full nationwide 5G wireless network, but instead, plans to selectively deploy its own 5G in dense, high-traffic areas of the markets it serves today to access the network.” said Tom Nagel, Comcast’s senior vice president of wireless strategy. Comcast currently holds wireless spectrum licenses that cover about 80 percent of its home customers (of which about 50 percent of the U.S. population).
