RELATED: AT&T preps for 5G demo at June conference in Los Angeles area Getting true gigabit throughputs for 5G is going to involve millimeter wave spectrum, and AT&T's acquisition of FiberTower last year was really important because it got a large, nationwide block of 39 GHz spectrum, AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said during a JPMorgan conference on Tuesday, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. Getting true gigabit speeds also will require a lot of small cell deployments, and the U.S. government can help there in terms of permitting, licensing and helping get municipalities on board. At the end of the day, the difficult part is deploying hundreds of thousands of small cells, and getting permission municipality by municipality is going to be what takes the most time, he said.