Using non-standard 5G equipment, Verizon was able to roll out the first 5G broadband service back in October of 2018 to four cities.
However, because it used non-standard equipment, the company at some point will need to replace it in order to meet future network requirements. As a result, the company said it won’t be expanding the service and instead the carrier will wait until 5G standard equipment is available to open up new cities to the broadband service, according to Venturebeat.
Verizon announced its plans to introduce commercial 5G broadband internet service in September last year at Mobile World Congress and that it would deploy to four cities — Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento, California. However, this was built on non-standard 5G equipment combining end-to-end fiber resources, a large deployment of small cells and millimeter wave band spectrum.
While this made Verizon the first to market with a form of 5G, it meant that at some point it would need to update that equipment. Instead of further expanding its 5G Home broadband service and replacing even more equipment, the company has decided to halt the program and wait until the certified equipment is ready to use, which is expected sometime in the second half of this year.
Carriers and device makers seem to be focused on delivering the first 5G smartphones and 5G mobile networks as the priority over other technology such as broadband. This is evident by the recent news that every U.S.-based carrier will launch a 5G smartphone in the first half of the year. So far, Verizon is the only carrier or company to announce anything other than mobile wireless in regard to 5G.
The good news is that according to Jason Leigh, senior research analyst for mobility at International Data Corp., the rollout of Verizon’s 5G Home broadband service has been relatively successful with customers reporting near 1 GB/s speeds depending on their geographic location. Although, some are getting just 300 MB/s if they are farther away from the source or encountering obstacles.
“The challenge is that I can get that kind of speed from Cox or Comcast now as well,” Leigh said. “So they are struggling with where the advantage is.”
As the technology improves and the standard-ready equipment becomes available, it may be possible to get to the 10 GB/s speed that 5G promises, but that will be some years away, Leigh conceded.
