T-Mobile first Dutch telecom to offer nationwide 5G coverage

T-Mobile is offering national 5G coverage from Tuesday, the telecom company announced. With that T-Mobile is the first company in the Netherlands to offer 5G nationwide, which means that 90 percent of Netherlands residents live within T-Mobile's 5G coverage area, NU.nl reports.

At this stage, the difference between 4G and 5G is not very big. The Dutch telecom companies are using the 700 MHz band auctioned off in July for their 5G networks. On that band, data traffic is only slightly faster than with 4G.

For a truly significant speed increase, the 3.5 GHz band is needed. But that frequency will only be auctioned in the Netherlands in 2022 at the earliest. The Dutch military is currently using it for wiretapping.

Vodafone and KPN also offer customers 5G coverage, but not yet nationwide.