Verizon pushes forward 5G expansion plans

Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) has announced an expansion of 5G Nationwide services to additional customers in Upstate New York, OK, New England, Central Texas and Tusla. The company said around 24 million more people will access the advanced 5G network nationwide, bringing the total number of people accessing the network to 230 million in 2,700 cities. The 5G service was launched in October and uses Dynamic Spectrum Sharing technology, which uses a low frequency band shared between 4G LTE and 5G. The company plans to move the 5G networks to a standalone version that doesn't involve LTE, but this could be a multi-year effort. The operator has also expanded the 5G ultra-broadband network to Tampa, Durham, Albuquerque and St. Petersburg. This brings the total coverage of the 5G ultra-broadband network to 61 cities, suggesting the company has kept its promise to deliver the network to customers in around 60 cities by the end of 2020. The service uses the mmWave spectrum, which is either 28 GHz or 39 GHz, providing fast speeds for customers. With the high speeds, customers can stream TV shows and download movies in seconds, as well as collaborate remotely and hold video conferences in near real time. Verizon says urban enterprise customers now have access to 5G ultra-wideband technology, which will help accelerate digital transformation, revolutionize customer interaction, manage operations and track inventory. However, Verizon points out that there is a problem with the mmWave spectrum, namely poor propagation characteristics and low range of the signals. The competitor T-Mobile also points out the problem at every opportunity. However, Verizon is using the latest technology to solve this problem, but for the nationwide level it is using DSS. Some analysts argue that using DSS or lower bands will result in a service less comparable to 4G LTE. Verizon says that the underlying network infrastructure was built on top of a cloud-native containerization infrastructure that enables high levels of operational automation and adaptability.