Parts of Little Rock and five other areas in Arkansas are edging closer to the advent of 5G technology, the fifth generation of small cell wireless technology.
The five other Arkansas areas include parts of Fayetteville and Benton County; Fort Smith; Pine Bluff; Garland County; and Cleburne County, AT&T announced this month.
In all, AT&T, the country's second-largest wireless carrier behind Verizon, is offering varying levels of 5G technology in 141 markets in 24 states and in Puerto Rico.
AT&T calls the expansion "5G Evolution," which simply indicates being a forerunner to full-scale 5G technology.
The full-scale 5G technology will be deployed in both very high frequencies and in lower frequency bands where cellular is deployed today, said Dave Wolter, AT&T's assistant vice president of radio technology and strategy.
"5G is the next generation of cellular," Wolter said in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "2G was focused on voice, primarily. Then we went to a third generation of cellular, where it was still focused on voice but more capacity and they started to bring in data at that point. The fourth generation was focused on really getting high speed data services."
The reason so much new equipment has to be installed with 5G is because high frequency radio signals don't travel as far, Wolter told the San Antonio Express News.
Instead of utilizing tall cell towers, small cell nodes will be placed on "street furniture" such as traffic signal poles or maybe on tops of buildings, Wolter said.
"This will happen at every 100, 200 meters [300 to 600 feet] if we're going to have good, solid coverage of a given area," Wolter told the Texas newspaper.
The other major wireless carriers -- Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint -- also are installing 5G in markets, but AT&T's intent is to be the first company to offer 5G service in the United States, Joan Marsh, AT&T's executive vice president of regulatory and state external affairs, said in a public policy blog in February.
Verizon plans to be first to the market in both 5G residential broadband and 5G mobility, said Chris McCann, a Verizon spokesman. The company will begin offering 5G residential broadband service in up to five markets starting in the second half of 2018*, including Sacramento, Calif., McCann said.
The 5G technology will be many times faster than existing 4G speeds. It will allow for the growth of the "Internet of things," where even household appliances can be linked to the Internet.
"With 5G, we are building the technology infrastructure that will change the way we live, work and enjoy entertainment, for the better," Marsh said.
AT&T's 5G Evolution technology theoretically can deliver peak speeds for capable devices of up to 400 megabits per second, the company said.
Independent tests have been done at the latest level of 5G technology where peak wireless speeds reached 537 megabits per second, said Andre Fuetsch, president of AT&T labs and the company's chief technology officer.
"At those speeds, downloading a full [high-definition] movie typically takes less than a minute," Fuetsch said.
AT&T expects to start deploying full-scale mobile 5G technology in a dozen cities by the end of the year, said Dale Ingram, an AT&T spokesman.
So far, AT&T has announced only three of those cities -- Atlanta, Dallas and Waco, Texas, Ingram said.
Verizon's McCann argues that AT&T's 5G Evolution is "nothing more than what the rest of the industry refers to as [4G] advanced technologies."
Mayor Mark Stodola said it is important for Little Rock to have as fast a connection to the Internet as possible.
"5G is the next level," Stodola said. "This is a broad development that both AT&T and Verizon and others are putting out. It just makes it that much better for our thriving tech community."
AT&T considers Little Rock a "technology friendly place," Marsh said.
And Little Rock already has caught AT&T's attention with a streamlined permitting process that was adopted as a city ordinance last year.
"Little Rock passed a small cell ordinance that facilitates efficient small cell deployments, supporting denser networks and faster data speeds in advance of 5G," Marsh said.
Little Rock has tried to create an even playing field for all wireless carriers to install 5G equipment in the city, said Tom Carpenter, the city attorney.
Little Rock's ordinance for wireless equipment to be placed in city rights of way was approved in June last year, Carpenter said.
There are still tweaks that the city wants to do to the ordinance and that the companies may want to do, Carpenter said.
Carpenter still isn't certain how many companies want to install 5G equipment in Little Rock.
For example, at one point in the River Market District, as the city understood it, Verizon wanted to put up small wireless towers, Carpenter said.
"I think I've got five or six companies that are asking to be involved in this in one way or another," Carpenter said.
The Little Rock permitting process is based on a simple two-page form, Marsh said. And a single permit can be used for up to 25 small cells.
"Rather than require full zoning commission and City Council approval, Little Rock created a 'permitted use' standard, which shortens the review process for small cell application from 180 days to a maximum of 60," Marsh said.
Little Rock did not look to small-cell permitting to fill budget shortfalls, but instead set reasonable one-time permitting rates of $100 for five small cells and $50 for each additional small cell with a recurring annual fee of $20, Marsh said.
As a result, Marsh said, AT&T already has at least 29 applications pending and is scheduled to deploy more than 100 additional nodes this year.
Little Rock wanted to make the 5G technology as accessible to as many residents as possible, Stodola said.
"We think it's a growth issue and a technology and business issue to make it available and as affordable as possible," Stodola said. "We're not there to make a ton of money off it but to really provide a wonderful service for our citizens."
Stodola hopes that having the 5G technology available early will help attract businesses to Little Rock.
"We're going to use all of our technology resources as recruitment tools," Stodola said. "Certainly the ability to have 5G technology is going to be an attractive benefit to various companies that want to locate here."
SundayMonday Business on 04/29/2018
*CORRECTION: Verizon will begin 5G residential broadband in three to five markets beginning in the second half of 2018. A previous version of this article incorrectly stated when residential broadband will begin.