Those who have been keeping a pulse on the developments in consumer 5G network service know that major cellular providers soon plan to begin offering 5G to their customers, but a specific timeline hadn’t been announced by such providers yet.
That was until this past Sept. 11 at Mobile World Congress Americas 2018, where Verizon Wireless group president Ronan Dunne made headlines by announcing in a keynote that beginning Oct. 1, Verizon will be rolling out the United States’ first 5G home network to select cities. The company followed up with a press release that same day, and posted a video interview with Dunne a day later.
As the first company to provide 5G broadband internet service to customers, the new service is called Verizon 5G Home, and will initially be available in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. As of Sept. 11, potential customers have been able to check Verizon’s website to see if they’re eligible for the service. Verizon had already made those initial cities known in previous press releases but hadn’t announced a rollout date.
The company said Verizon 5G Home customers “should expect typical network speeds around 300 Mbps and, depending on location, peak speeds of nearly 1 Gig, with no data caps,” adding that the service is ideal for customers looking to cut the cord or upgrade from their current cable service.
Eligible customers could start ordering Verizon 5G Home as of the morning of Sept. 13, and under a “First On 5G” introductory offer that gives them the first three months free. After the introductory period, current Verizon customers with a qualifying smartphone plan will pay $50 per month for the service, while non-Verizon customers will pay $70 per month. Those prices include taxes and fees, and don’t require an annual contract, and there are no additional hardware costs.
Verizon 5G Home won’t initially be available to the entire city of those mentioned above. The company said the service will initially be available “in certain neighborhoods” in those cities, and the company “will rapidly expand its coverage area once we can install the new standards-compliant equipment from our vendors.”
Verizon 5G Home is built on the company’s 5G Ultra Wideband network. It’s comprised of a large deployment of small cells, with each cell able to provide coverage for multiple homes. Along with end-to-end deep fiber resources throughout the network, another key component of 5G Home is “Critical, and best-in-class spectrum holdings, particularly in the millimeter wave bands, the only spectrum with the bandwidth to realize the full 5G potential for capacity, throughput and latency,” the company said.
“To deliver the full potential of 5G, a wireless network provider must have three fundamental assets: deep fiber resources, a large deployment of small cells and critical spectrum holdings. That’s Ultra Wideband,” said Kyle Malady, Verizon’s chief technology officer. “We will deliver a revolutionary 5G experience that will change how people live, work and play.”
Here’s the Verizon video from Sept. 11:
