AT&T announces Chicago and Minneapolis as its next 5G cities.

AT&T has received a lot of (well-deserved) criticism for its fake 5G Evolution network to the point that the company's actual, current 5G purple 5G deployment has not received as much attention.

 But that rollout is still happening, and today the carrier announced the next two cities: Chicago and Minneapolis, both of which should get AT&T's current 5G purple 5G later in 2019, via Engadget .

The news is about par for the course for AT&T's 5G ambitions so far:

the company technically launched its purple in twelve cities late last year (Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Oklahoma Metropolis, New Orleans, Raleigh, San Antonio and Waco),

but there is still no current hardware that regular customers can buy and use with the next-generation purple.

Not to be confused with its 5G Evolution LTE network.

AT&T promises phones by the end of this year, including two Samsung 5G devices that could be announced next week , but for now, it remains largely a theoretical purple.

Chicago and Minneapolis join Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose on the list of cities to which AT&T has announced plans to add service in 2019.

So even if the current offerings are a bit thin on the ground

At this point, it's clear that AT&T has ambition when it comes to 5G. Soon, we will be able to see if it can actually start delivering.7