Verizon now provides 5G phone service to parts of 87 U.S. cities, 5G Home to parts of 65 cities and 5G Business Internet to parts of 62 cities
Verizon says that is has surpassed its goal of deploying 14,000 new 5G Ultra Wideband, or millimeter wave (mmWave), cells sites by the end of 2021. The carrier now provides 5G phone service to parts of 87 U.S. cities, 5G Home to parts of 65 cities and 5G Business Internet to parts of 62 cities.
At the 2021 UBS Global TMT Conference earlier this week, CEO Hans Vestberg foreshadowed this latest news, indicating that Verizon has made significant progress across its five “vectors of growth,” and anticipates this trend to continue into next year.
“I have to say ’22 is an important year, and we feel really excited about it,” Vestberg said at the conference.
Kyle Malady, CTO of Verizon further characterized the carrier’s progress in a more recent statement: “This year our team has nearly doubled its 5G deployment versus the past two years and exceeded the aggressive targets we set at the beginning of the year, even in the face of global supply chain issues, and we’re not stopping. We are on track to deliver our 5G Ultra Wideband service using C Band spectrum to more than 100 million people in the first quarter of 2022.”
To support its C Band ambitions, Verizon has partnered with Crown Castle and SBA Communications to accelerate the deployment of C Band equipment and has conducted trials to improved aggregation of C band spectrum with mmWave spectrum. A trial conducted in May 2021 achieved speeds of 4.3 Gbps.
When asked about Verizon’s future goals for the C Band spectrum, the company’s Senior VP of engineering Heidi Hemmer previously told RCR Wireless News that the plan is to cover 250 million POPs sometime in 2024. Separately, Vestberg told investors that the carrier will pump another $10 billion into deploying C Band over the next two years to put the spectrum into use as quickly as possible.
Verizon also claims to have outdone itself regarding broadband coverage goals, stating that it has 5G Home available in five times the number of markets compared to last year, and that its 5G Business Internet is in nearly three times the number of cities originally projected for 2021.
