5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE: Clearing Up the Confusion (2025 Guide)

Navigating the world of mobile technology can feel like learning a new language, especially with terms like 5G, 5G+, and 5GE floating around. You might be asking: what’s the real story behind 5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE? Are they different speeds? Different technologies?

This guide will break down these terms based specifically on the provided technical information, helping you understand what each label means (and sometimes, what it doesn’t mean).

We’ll dive into the technology, focusing on the core differences in speed, coverage, and the underlying spectrum that powers these connections, ensuring you understand the 5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE landscape as presented in current data.

Understanding “Standard” 5G: The Foundation

Think of “5G” as the broad, official fifth generation of mobile network technology (standardized as IMT-2020). Its goals are ambitious: super-fast downloads (enhanced Mobile Broadband or eMBB), connecting billions of devices (massive Machine Type Communications or mMTC), and enabling ultra-reliable, near-instant communication (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications or URLLC).

Crucially, the 5G standard is designed to work across different radio frequency bands:

1. Low-Band Spectrum (< 1 GHz): This is the backbone for wide coverage. Like long radio waves, these signals travel far and penetrate buildings well. Carriers often use this for their “Nationwide 5G” networks. While reliable, the speeds on low-band 5G are typically only an incremental improvement over good 4G LTE, often in the 50-100 Mbps range.
2. Mid-Band Spectrum (1 GHz – 7 GHz): This is the “sweet spot” offering a great balance of speed and coverage. Frequencies like C-Band (around 3.7 GHz, specifically band n77 in the US) and 2.5 GHz (band n41) provide significantly faster speeds (hundreds of Mbps – recent US medians often 200-350 Mbps) and lower latency than low-band while still covering decent areas.
3. High-Band Spectrum (mmWave > 24 GHz): This delivers the ultimate speed and capacity, potentially reaching multi-gigabit speeds (1000+ Mbps) with ultra-low latency. However, these millimeter waves travel very short distances and are easily blocked by obstacles.

So, when your phone just says “5G,” it could be connected to any of these bands, resulting in vastly different real-world experiences. Often, basic “5G” without any extra indicators refers to the more widespread low-band or potentially mid-band network.

Decoding “5G+”: AT&T’s High-Performance Brand

Now, let’s look at 5G+. According to the provided reference material:

• What it is: 5G+ is explicitly identified as AT&T’s brand name used to signify its higher-performance 5G service.
• What powers it: AT&T’s 5G+ utilizes the faster parts of the 5G spectrum:
  • High-Band (mmWave): Initially deployed in select high-traffic locations (like venues, airports, dense urban zones) using frequencies like 39 GHz (band n260). This provides the peak multi-gigabit speeds but in very limited areas.
  • Mid-Band: Increasingly, 5G+ relies on AT&T’s mid-band spectrum holdings, specifically C-Band (n77) and the 3.45 GHz band (also part of n77). This mid-band deployment is crucial for delivering significantly faster speeds (hundreds of Mbps) and better capacity over wider areas than mmWave allows, forming the core of the improved 5G+ experience for more users.
• Performance Goal: 5G+ is designed to deliver noticeably faster speeds, greater capacity, and improved latency compared to AT&T’s standard nationwide 5G network (which relies more heavily on low-band spectrum).

In the 5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE discussion, 5G+ clearly represents a specific carrier’s branded premium tier of 5G, leveraging mid-band and high-band frequencies for enhanced performance.

What About 5GE? The Missing Piece in the Data

Here’s where we address the third term in 5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE. The research consistently shows that 5GE (5G Evolution), which was primarily a marketing term used by AT&T, is based on enhanced 4G LTE technology (specifically, LTE-Advanced or LTE-Advanced Pro). It utilizes features like carrier aggregation, 4×4 MIMO, and 256 QAM on the existing 4G LTE network infrastructure and spectrum.

While these enhancements did provide speeds faster than basic 4G LTE, performance benchmarks and analyses generally placed 5GE speeds in the range of other carriers’ advanced 4G LTE networks. For instance, studies from the time often cited average real-world download speeds for 5GE around 28-40 Mbps, though theoretical peaks for LTE-Advanced are higher. Some sources suggest a broader potential range of 50-200 Mbps for 5GE, but multiple real-world tests found it performing similarly to, or sometimes even slightly slower than, competitors’ advanced 4G offerings. Its latency remained typical for 4G LTE, often around 20-30 milliseconds or higher.

In contrast, standard 5G and its premium tiers like 5G+ (AT&T’s brand for its faster 5G using mid-band and high-band spectrum) are built on the actual 5G New Radio (NR) standard. This technology uses different, more efficient methods and can access new, wider spectrum bands (especially mid-band like C-band and high-band mmWave).

5GE Performance Data:

Performance data consistently shows significantly higher speeds for true 5G. Average download speeds on mid-band 5G (a major component of 5G+) commonly exceed 200-350 Mbps in recent US benchmarks, with high-band mmWave offering potential speeds well over 1 Gbps (1000 Mbps). Furthermore, true 5G technology is designed for much lower latency, aiming for under 10ms and even approaching 1ms in ideal conditions, which is substantially lower than 5GE’s 4G-based latency.

Therefore, based on the available data regarding underlying technology, speed benchmarks (average and peak potential), and latency capabilities, the evidence does not support the claim that 5GE is better than standard 5G or 5G+. Instead, the statistics consistently demonstrate that true 5G and its enhanced tiers like 5G+ represent a significant generational leap forward in performance compared to the enhanced 4G LTE technology that was marketed as 5GE.

Therefore, based strictly on the supplied research data, we can compare 5G (as a broad standard with varying performance) and 5G+ (as AT&T’s specific high-performance tier), but we cannot include 5GE in this direct comparison, as it’s absent from the source material.

(It’s worth noting, though not stated in the provided text, that “5GE” was a controversial marketing term used previously by AT&T for advancements on its 4G LTE network, leading to confusion precisely because it wasn’t true 5G according to the official standard.)

Key Differences Summarized (5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE)

Let’s summarize the core differences as described in the reference material:

5G vs 5G+ vs 5GE: Key Differences Summarized