Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm have hit another major 5G milestone, delivering download speeds of 5 Gbps.
Verizon has mainly been focusing on mmWave 5G, the fastest variety of 5G. It promises speeds in the gigabits, with latency in the single digits, or low double digits at most.
Now, a week after announcing speeds of 4 Gbps, Verizon, Ericsson and Qualcomm have achieved 5 Gbps download speeds.
“We have been driving the evolution of 5G technology from the early days and we continue to aggressively drive innovation — pushing the limits of the technology farther and faster for our customers,” said Brian Mecum, Vice President of Device Technology at Verizon. “This latest achievement is yet another milestone in providing a genuinely differentiated service for our customers on mmWave.”
Verizon says that, when fully mature, its mmWave 5G will deliver speeds up to 10 Gbps, along with latency under 5 milliseconds.
“Our strategy from the beginning has always been to reshape the world by driving innovation and leading the way in deploying the keenly differentiated 5G Ultra Wideband experience customers can only get from the mmWave based 5G network. It is the 21st century infrastructure that will shape the future,” said Mecum. “Today’s demonstration shows the advancements we are making to provide our customers with the mobile technology and capabilities they don’t even yet know they need.”
The one issue Verizon still faces, however, is coverage. While it offers blazing speeds, mmWave has extremely short range and terrible building penetration. Verizon recently invested heavily in mid-band spectrum at the latest FCC auction. Prior to that, the company did not have enough mid-band spectrum to effectively compete with T-Mobile, especially since most experts consider mid-band spectrum to be the 5G sweet spot for both range and performance.
Similarly, the company does not have enough low-band spectrum to roll out a dedicated, nationwide 5G network. Instead, it has had to rely on Dynamic Spectrum Switching (DSS) to share the spectrum used by its 4G LTE network. Unsurprisingly, early reviews report less-than-impressive performance.
While Verizon’s 5G is the undisputed king of speed, it has a long way to go before it can effectively deliver that performance to the majority of its users.
