Verizon Walks Back its 5G Wireless Hype Verizon is now walking back several years' worth of hype in regard to its fifth generation (5G) wireless plans. Verizon CFO Matthew Ellis informed attendees of the company's third-quarter earnings call that the technology wouldn't be deployed in any meaningful capacity in 2018, contradicting earlier claims that the company would be delivering gigabit to next year's superbowl. Most analysts don't believe that 5G will see any meaningful deployment until 2020, but that certainly hasn't stopped carriers like Verizon from prematurely hyping the technology.

While Verizon may tinker with trials of fixed 5G sometime next year, when asked if mobile 5G would arrive in any real capacity Ellis told a call attendee that "in terms of the timing of mobile 5G, it’s certainly not a 2018 activity.” Verizon did announced this week that it is working with Qualcomm Technologies and Novatel Wireless on 5G New Radio (NR) millimeter wave technology development and over-the-air field trials based on the 5G NR Release-15 specs by 3GPP. Those trials will start in 2018, utilizing Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology, adaptive beam forming and beam tracking techniques to test faster speeds at lower latencies. But again, don't expect any kind of viable commercial product launch anytime soon. You should, however, expect Verizon to continue to heavily hype these advancements as they slowly but surely lose their network quality edge to carriers like T-Mobile. That's not to say 5G won't be incredible when it finally fully materializes in 2020 or later. And users in some limited areas will see fixed-line 5G trials next year, Ellis was quick to remind everyone. “Nothing has changed about our intent to launch the fixed wireless broadband offering during the course of 2018,” Ellis said. But again, those "commerical" launchs of fixed service will likely be glorified paid betas only available to a limited number of customers, as Verizon looks toward wireless to serve DSL customers the company has been ignoring for years now. Rather unsurprisingly, T-Mobile CEO John Legere was quick to make fun of Verizon on Twitter for letting hype get a little ahead of reality over the last year. »twitter.com/JohnLegere/s ··· 56340480









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Most recommended from 18 comments



NOCMan

MadMacHatter

Premium Member

join:2004-09-30

Colorado Springs, CO 9 recommendations NOCMan Premium Member 5G is never going to work for phones Millimeter wave radios wont be able to penetrate walls or glass, so unless you're standing with line of sight to the tower outside you'll never realize the speeds and really I dont think phones need all that much speed to do what they're good at. Generally we dont download large files to phones. Tethered laptops being a small exception. 5G to homes will depend on external antennas and good line of sight so not a fix for everyone unless a lot more towers are built.



So no surprise they're walking back a product they will have hell deploying. Also they still fail to tell people about H2O attenuation of those signals as well. Good luck during heavy fog, snow, or rain. firedrakes

join:2009-01-29

Arcadia, FL 4 recommendations firedrakes Member odd seeing real 4g was way different then what we have now seeing real 4g before it was force to change specs was. 1gb while still 100mb while moving. the speed would not dip.