If you haven’t already bought a 5G-capable phone on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, the Christmas shopping season is here and there are sure to be deals on 5G phones. In most populated urban cities, 5G network coverage is available. However, if you live in a rural area, you may need to check that 5G is supported in your area. Also of the major mobile carrier networks, each carrier’s coverage area is different in each city. At the time of this writing, these are the 5G coverage maps for the major carriers:
https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/coverage-map
https://www.att.com/5g/coverage-map/
Of course, if you don’t need 5G everywhere you go in a city, all the carriers have 4G availability and most 5G phones will have back-ward compatibility.
Then the next question that may come to mind is which Carrier Network has the fastest download speeds and, probably to a lesser extent, upload speeds. After all if your 5G phone doesn’t have fast download speeds, why upgrade from your 4G phone? According to these sources that I found in a quick search:
https://www.opensignal.com/2020/11/19/quantifying-the-us-urban-5g-experience-understanding-mmwave-5g
https://www.pcmag.com/fastest-mobile-networks/2020
Verizon has the fastest 5G download speeds.