[superkuh]

Almost all 5G deployals around the world are 5G non-standalone; they have 4G LTE basestations doing handset control and 5G modulations (on their own frequency span) for data transfer.

Unrelated, this can't be a map of cell phone towers. It's probably a map of cell phone basestation locations.

[samizdis]

OK, thanks for that. I was wondering whether there was a way to break out the 5G from 4G in the visualisation. Also, I'd thought (perhaps wrongly) that many more 5G stations were necessary for coverage in a given area than 4G/3G because of the shorter physical range.

[superkuh]

5G doesn't imply a frequency. For example, in my region 5G non-standalone from T-mobile uses a 20 MHz band around 630 MHz. That's even lower in frequency and with better propagation than most bands chosen for 4G LTE.

5G modulations themselves improve upon 4G LTE standards by about 15-20% hertz for hertz. That means that in order to get more speed they can't use the same amount of spectrum. For >20% improvement they need to use more of the electromagnetic spectrum. That usually means using higher frequencies that don't propagate as well. But it is nothing intrinsic to the 5G modulation.