Verizon rolls out its 5G network nationwide

[David Matthews]

Bottom line: Verizon announced that it was lighting up its nationwide 5G network. However, customers may not be able to get the full performance of the network depending on factors such as location and tower congestion.

During it's "Hi, Speed" virtual announcements, Apple brought on Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to tout how fast the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro 5G speeds would be. Vestberg also announced that Verizon was finally rolling out its 5G network nationwide. However, the speeds may not necessarily be "5G."

Before we get to that, let's just go over what Verizon is doing first. According the announcement, the company is deploying its "5G Ultra Wideband" service to 19 additional U.S. cities and six airports. This is built on the millimeter wave 5G that has admittedly blazing speeds but spotty coverage due to how high the frequency is. Verizon is also rolling out what it calls "5G Nationwide," which uses the older 4G towers.

To go a bit deeper, Verizon uses a technology called "dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS)" that effectively creates 4G/5G hybrid systems. Some of the cell tower spectrum capacity is shifted to 4G or 5G depending on the demand. This means that some percentage of customers will get 4G while another percentage will get 5G. This also allows carriers like Verizon and AT&T (who also uses DSS) to save a bit of money on constructing new cell sites for 5G by simply reusing 4G towers and technology.

Verizon was one of the first American carriers to offer true 5G speeds. The company completed its goal of lighting up 35 cities with millimeter wave 5G by the middle of 2020. Today's announcement ups the number to 54 cities. That said, getting those gigabit download speeds still depends on location and even what direction you're standing in. By comparison, T-Mobile's 5G network is largely using low and mid-band frequencies in order to achieve a greater coverage footprint.

On the plus side, Apple's new iPhones have support for all of the low, mid, and high band 5G frequencies. However, carriers still have to prove why the average person should care about 5G right now.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87097-verizon-rolls-out-5g-network-nationwide.html

 

[dirtyferret]

"However, carriers still have to prove why the average person should care about 5G right now."

It's one whole G faster then 4g, what more could an iphone owner want (or understand)?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I’m sure I’ll be wowed by 5G a few years from now

 

[redhat]

Lets assume 5G is now established worldwide, what about data limit and prices. I mean with such high speed it is just a mater of minute to exceed your data limit which is I believe what make some companies happy.

 

[drjekelmrhyde]

This means that some percentage of customers will get 4G while another percentage will get 5G.

Yeap. I noticed this on At&t. I tested my speed by my house and the speed by my aunt's. I get boinked down to 4G speeds at home since this neighborhood has more people using 5G device, while my aunt's neighborhood I get "real 5G" since it's not as many 5G devices.

 

[Lounds]

5G will be in cities but due to its short range, not many places outside of cities will have signal.

 

[p51d007]

4G LTE is FAST ENOUGH. What the heck is everyone going to do with the super duper high speed? Download ISO files?

 

[Rdmetz]

Lets assume 5G is now established worldwide, what about data limit and prices. I mean with such high speed it is just a mater of minute to exceed your data limit which is I believe what make some companies happy.

You're ability to blast through your data caps in seconds doesn't really matter it's not measured in speed but in amount of data so just cause you're youtube video startd playback faster or you don't experience buffering or the websites you pull up are instant instead of taking 2-10 seconds to load.

The speed benefit won't instantly make your usage go skyrocketing.

Not unless you're just literally trying to flood the maximum bandwidth down the "pipes" constantly for this exact purpose.

 

[someOtherGuy]

You're ability to blast through your data caps in seconds doesn't really matter it's not measured in speed but in amount of data so just cause you're youtube video startd playback faster or you don't experience buffering or the websites you pull up are instant instead of taking 2-10 seconds to load.

The speed benefit won't instantly make your usage go skyrocketing.

Not unless you're just literally trying to flood the maximum bandwidth down the "pipes" constantly for this exact purpose.

Bandwidth is the measurement of quantity, not necessarily "speed". With higher bandwidth you get to "move more" bytes in a time unit. When you're streaming video in youtube and you're bandwidth constricted you will usually get a lower quality version. The "buffering" and faster response times are a function of latency, which is an extremely complicated measure, but ultimately the information/content won't move faster that the speed of light, so, you'll get to the point where improving your bandwidth won't translate to "immediateness".

The bandwidth limitation is something that helps you with the data caps. You're paying for X speed up to Y amount of bytes and that would take you, say, 48h to consume (how long would it take you to burn 8GB @20Mbps?). If you improve one variable but not the other, the relation becomes unappealing for the buyer. Why would I want to improve my speed to the point that I can blow my month worth of traffic in 10 minutes (if I go wild)? What would I do the other 29 days, 23h and 50 minutes of that month? For your ISP bandwidth is cheaper than throughput, that's why the data caps exist in the first place: they can't accommodate "all their clients" using the network all the time at full bandwidth, so deterrents needs to be implemented (aka data caps).