“I think we will have (functional phones running on 5G in 50% of the country) by next year,” says Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. “It is a functionality called DSS, dynamic spectrum sharing, where basically it’s agnostic to what type of phone you have. It won’t matter whether it’s a 4G or 5G and that’s best for the customer. I think that it’s going to be next year. That’s what I said before. And remember, the prediction is that by 2024 50 percent of the US population will own a 5G phone.”

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon, discusses when 5G will be available and his prediction on when most people will actually own 5G phones, in an interview on CNBC:

50 Percent of US Will Have 5G Capability By Next Year

We have severed 5G phones that are not getting too hot. But of course, at the beginning of technology, you can find those type of things. That’s why we when we launched we launched in one or two markets to see that it’s really working. Now we’re actually deploying in all markets with all our vendors on infrastructure and with four different devices. It is actually starting to work very well. 

Remember, in the beginning, we had 600 megabits per second on the phones. Just for comparison, we have 50-100 megabits on 4G. Right now on 5G, we’re at 2 gigs. So only in the six to eight weeks since we have been launching we learn and we do improvements on the software constantly. As I was around when 4G came, I think that 4G took a much longer time to actually reach those improvements. I see a good track record and the whole industries behind it.

I think we will have (functional phones running on 5G in 50% of the country) by next year. It is a functionality called DSS, dynamic spectrum sharing, where basically it’s agnostic to what type of phone you have. It won’t matter whether it’s a 4G or 5G and that’s best for the customer. I think that it’s going to be next year. That’s what I said before. And remember, the prediction is that by 2024 50 percent of the US population will own a 5G phone. Don’t forget that 4G is an extremely powerful technology as well and we need to cater to all our customers with the best network that we have.