Verizon has officially launched its 5G Ultra Wideband (UWB) network, expanding coverage to parts of 1,700 cities.
The operator announced the “historic” day after switching on its C-band deployment which uses mid-band frequencies that it spent $52.9 billion acquiring in an auction back in March 2021.
Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, said:
“This massive launch will put incredible speeds, reliability and security in the hands of our customers and amplifies our offering of reliable home and business broadband options to more places around the country, well ahead of the commitment we made last year.
As 5G Ultra Wideband becomes available to more and more people and businesses, it will allow our customers to do more amazing things.”
While 5G UWB was technically available prior to this week, it used Verizon’s mmWave spectrum that offers blistering speeds but in a very limited number of outdoor locations. C-band should mean that Verizon customers will see download speeds up to 1Gbps in a much larger number of locations.
A number of posts to the Verizon subreddit indicates customers are seeing a huge increase to their speeds:
“This is one of those historic days when you think about how quickly we’ve done it,” said Vestberg. “And also, now we have a network that has low latency, MEC, and everything else that brings things like the metaverse straight into our wheelhouse.”
However, this is really just the start for Verizon.
“In many ways, the team has run a marathon to get us to the starting line,” said Verizon Chief Technology Officer Kyle Malady.
5G has been touted as being a true alternative to home broadband and Verizon is billing it as such with its Verizon 5G Home service.
“We’ve already proven our success with Fios broadband in the Northeast, and now we will give millions more consumers and business owners around the country a real choice in how they get their internet,” added Vestberg.
Verizon 5G Home was available in just 65 cities in December but the operator has now expanded that tenfold to around 900 cities.
“Now, more than 20 million households have access to game-changing home wireless broadband in more than 900 cities across the country, and more than 2 million businesses are covered with 5G Business Internet service,” says Verizon.
Vestberg says that Verizon now has to get to work at letting customers know what they can do with the operator’s 5G network.
Want to learn more about 5G and the opportunities it presents from industry leaders? Check out 5G Expo. The next events in the series will be held in Santa Clara on 11-12 May 2022, Amsterdam on 20-21 September 2022, and London on 1-2 December 2022.
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