As T-Mobile races ahead with its rollout of 5G, the wireless giant is now on the hunt for startups to develop the additional bells and whistles that will make its new, high-powered network stand out from its competitors.
To that end, T-Mobile on Wednesday (Oct. 21) announced plans for a new, multimillion-dollar investment fund to help fuel startups developing “groundbreaking 5G products and services” for the wireless carrier’s network.
The move comes on the heels of T-Mobile’s announcement last month that it had flipped the switch on mid-band 5G towers in 90 cities and towns across the United States, with plans to add thousands more by the end of the year.
T-Mobile said it will look to provide investment backing for companies developing new technologies and products in four different areas, including security, “edge compute,” the future of work and industrial IoT.
In particular, the wireless giant said it is looking for new advances and products that boost “application response times in distributed cloud and networking environments,” as well as those that safeguard customers’ networks from security and privacy threats.
Under the category of future of work, T-Mobile said it will be interested in investing in companies that are exploring ways to connect a “more modern, distributed workforce” through new collaborative communications platforms.
And as for industrial IoT, T-Mobile said it is searching for new technologies and devices that connect “people and things at scale with rapid data collection,” as well as “processing via connected devices and sensors.”
T-Mobile is one of a number of heavy hitters looking to jump on the 5G bandwagon, including Apple, with varying degrees of success so far.
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