Verizon switched on its 5G signals in Miami, Salt Lake City, Grand Rapids, and four other cities over the weekend, which was great news for prospective Verizon 5G customers in the region. If you remember, Verizon had set a target to reach 30 cities by the end of 2020. Well, the company has just added its 31st city in the form of Hampton Roads (Virginia), which was accompanied by Cleveland and Columbus, thus living up to its promise with a few days left to spare.
However, network coverage has been anything but satisfying, especially considering the hype around 5G right now. Even if the network is available in the city, the use of the mmWave network means not everybody can access 5G networks in the city at the same time while you’ll have to be in a particular area to access the networks. This is where its rival, T-Mobile’s 5G implementation has better success since it uses 600 MHz bands to achieve 5G speeds. While it’s significantly slower than mmWave frequencies, it offers better coverage than ultra-wideband 5G.
The Columbus airport is an excellent example of this as you can find 5G network in the ticketing area, but not near the boarding gates. As Engadget notes, mmWave 5G at this point can’t even cover a whole stadium since it cannot handle interferences on its path. It’s worth noting, however, that by adding 31 5G cities, Verizon has now officially overtaken AT&T in terms of 5G coverage areas in the country.
But Verizon still has some catching up to do with the likes of T-Mobile which offers nationwide coverage thanks to the aforementioned 600 MHz spectrum, while Sprint is only available in 9 cities as of now.
Have you tried out Verizon 5G yet? What do you make of it?
Source: Verizon
Via: Engadget