I live in a midwest city with a population around 25,000. We won't see 5G for a long, long time. We need signal that goes farther, not faster. 4G is still being rolled out to more rural areas. 5G is a feature I'd rather not pay for.
5G can potentially help with that when deployed on existing spectrum, because increased transmission rates reduces airtime utilization, and some cells adjust their range based on utilization. It might not help much, depending on current utilization and terrain and what not, but it'll probably help some, and I imagine carriers will do gradual deployments of that to lower density areas when there's enough handsets that support it and base station equipment is cost reduced enough. I don't think it's going to be fast, but I don't think it'll be on the long, long time scale.
Of course, 5G on the new high frequency spectrum is unlikely to be useful in low density areas, and is unlikely to be deployed. Also, I think AT&T has plans to declare their LTE coverage to be 5G :P
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/13/210785...
> Verizon 5G Nationwide service is available today to more than 200 million people in 1,800 cities around the US.
I'm sure there's some trickery going on here, though?