Verizon 5G gets ready to take the next leap with C-Band — and I just tested it
Verizon 5G gets ready to accept the next leap with C-Band — and I but tested it
LOS ANGELES — Equally I stood outside the entryway to the arena that houses the Los Angeles Lakers, my phone was seeing download speeds worthy of a Magic Johnson-led fast-interruption. My download speeds reached hundreds of megabytes per 2d on boilerplate, with a top-speed of nigh 1.6 gigabytes, enough to finally deliver on 5G's promises of faster data and lower latency.
Alas, the speeds weren't on an actual network accessible to anyone. Rather, I was connected to a Verizon exam network built on the carrier'southward C-Band spectrum through a examination phone supplied to me by the company. The idea was to see what C-Ring can do for both range and operation once Verizon throws the switch on the next stage for its growing 5G network.
And what did I see? A damn fast network.
More than importantly, I saw how much Verizon's 5G network has evolved since the carrier first threw the switch on its inaugural commercial 5G network more than ii years agone. Back in 2019, I swooped into Chicago to see one of Verizon's get-go 5G installations congenital on millimeter wave (mmWave) engineering. Speeds then were certainly faster than the LTE connections nearly all of usa had, just they were inconsistent and limited to a block-by-block reach.
The test network I experimented with this week offers much faster speeds that are spread out over a wider surface area. Retrieve of it every bit Verizon stepping up to the challenge posed by T-Mobile, who currently has the widest reaching 5G network according to 3rd-party examination firms while also topping many 5G speed rankings.
Verizon believes that's about to change. By the end of March 2022, it says it will cover 100 million customers with C-Band spectrum after launching that service sometime in the next three months. (Good luck on getting the carrier to say when exactly.) Over the next couple years, that number volition grow to 240 million, every bit Verizon looks to augment its existing 5G network.
Information technology'due south an ambitious goal, and if you've got a 5G phone that besides works with C-Band spectrum, faster speeds could exist in your very almost hereafter. Hither's what I experienced in my testing and what Verizon'southward efforts will mean for hereafter performance.
How carriers are building out 5G
Building out a 5G network has required carriers to employ different types of wireless spectrum to offer the kind of operation and availability their customers await. T-Mobile has enjoyed a lot of success thus far by using low-band spectrum to launch the first nationwide 5G network at the end of 2019.
T-Mobile'south speeds at the time weren't equally fast as what other carriers were offering with 5G, but it could reach a wider swath of people. And that's but increased, as the carrier now can accomplish more than 300 one thousand thousand people with its electric current 5G coverage. Even better, T-Mobile has used the mid-band spectrum caused from its merger with Sprint to bolster speeds — 200 million people tin now admission the faster Ultra Chapters service.
Verizon took a different tack, starting out with mmWave, which delivers the fastest speeds. Simply mmWave's attain is limited, and yous usually have to be in sight of a tower to relish those fast speeds. Because mmWave signals tin can't become around obstructions similar windows and buildings, it's nearly impossible to get mmWave speeds indoors, unless you lot put a node in at that place (as Verizon has washed with many arenas and other high-capacity venues).
As of this writing, Verizon's mmWave-based 5G service reaches parts of 87 cities, while a slower nationwide network covers around 230 1000000 people.
C-Ring offers Verizon a chance to combine greater reach with faster speeds. At an FCC sale this spring, Verizon snagged the majority of the available C-Band spectrum with an heart toward using it to aggrandize the attain of its 5G service.
"I could not be happier with the combination we have of low-, mid- and C-Band spectrum," Verizon senior vice president of technology planning Adam Koeppe told reporters who attended this calendar week's test session in Los Angeles.
Testing Verizon C-Band 5G
As far equally exam sites become for C-Ring, Verizon couldn't have picked a ameliorate place than the LA Live amusement district in downtown Los Angeles. The site is wedged between the Microsoft Theater and the one-time Staples Heart (now ridiculously named after a cryptocurrency outfit) where the Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Kings all play their abode games.
My sometime iPhone 11 hit a superlative download speed of 34.9 Mbps; in that aforementioned location, the 5G Verizon device rode the carrier's C-Band to just over one Gbps.
It'due south the sort places where crowds regularly convene and where outdoor events are the norm — right at present, at that place's an ice rink set upwards for people looking to experience some holiday magic. In other words, information technology's the kind of spread out area where lots of smartphone-toting people are probable to converge, demanding faster download and upload speeds.
Only every bit importantly, it's a stark contrast to the kind of initial mmWave deployments Verizon was putting into place two years ago to get its 5G network off the basis. In those days, a mmWave node could bring high-speeds to a street corner here or an intersection there.
Verizon's C-Ring set-up at L.A. live reaches a wide area, and I was able to enjoy those top download speeds in front of the basketball arena even with towers located on the other side of a very well-trafficked street. The setup could probably achieve blocks away, though I wasn't able to establish merely how far the reach was in my express testing time. Suffice it to say, it's a lot more than extensive than what I've experienced with Verizon's mmWave service.
That said, in that location are still some inconsistencies with performance. Standing on the platform of the outdoor ice rank, I registered my slowest speeds on Verizon's test device — a 289 Mbps download speed every bit measured by Ookla's Speedtest app. Walking mayhap 20 feet away, those speeds improved to 611 Mbps, and when I walked across the street to stand by the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar statue, speeds had increased to 841 Mbps.
The reason for the disparity? I of Verizon'southward network gurus figured I was continuing too close to the structure where the C-Band hub was deployed so that the indicate was coming in at a suboptimal angle for my phone. The fact that speeds improved the further away I moved seemed to back that theory.
One of the nearly hitting results happened when I fired up Speedtest on my personal iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is continued to Verizon's LTE network. My iPhone hit a top speed download speed of 34.ix Mbps; in that same location, the 5G Verizon device rode the carrier's C-Band to only over 1 Gbps. If you've been reluctant to upgrade to a 5G phone because yous just aren't seeing the promised performance improvements, Verizon'due south C-Band is poised to modify your mind.
Verizon showed off other examples of what all this speed will mean beyond faster downloads. I got to test out a Snapchat filter in which I could mimic the powers of Marvels Dr. Strange by making fiery circles appear or multiplying into a dozen versions of myself. Information technology's the kind of demanding data task that simply works with the lower latency and faster speeds afforded mmWave-based 5G and now C-Band. (The filter launched before this fall as a Pixel 6 sectional.)
Similarly, some other app gave me a live look-in at the Phoenix Suns' arena some 375 miles abroad in which I could spin around the camera for 360-caste views rendered in existent time. Impressive stuff.
Verizon C-Band 5G: What happens next
Not anybody is enamored with C-Ring. The aviation manufacture and the Federal Aviation Administration fear that C-Band could interfere with safety systems on some airplanes. Verizon and AT&T — which likewise acquired C-Ring spectrum in this bound's auction — agreed not to launch C-Ring this calendar month, though Verizon has said information technology's still on track to see its goal of reaching 100 1000000 customers with C-Ring 5G coverage past the end of March.
When Verizon does flip the switch, in that location are already phones out there that can savor the faster speeds right away. iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models are both equipped to work with C-Ring, a Verizon executive told me, equally are Samsung's Galaxy S21, Milky way Z Fold 3 and Milky way Z Flip 3. (A Verizon spokesperson subsequently added that there are other 5G phones from other device makers that volition piece of work with C-Band at launch, too.) You'd imagine that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S22 flagships might bring together that list, too, one time they arrive in early on 2022.
For a lot of smartphone owners, the 5G transition hasn't felt terribly transformative given how small data speed gains have been up until now. Technologies like C-Band and T-Mobile'southward ongoing efforts to amend speeds with its ain Ultra Capacity 5G figure to change that. And 2022 is already shaping up to be a big year for wireless connectivity.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/verizon-5g-c-band-spectrum-tested
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