Verizon Launches 5G Network That Isn’t ‘Real’ 5G

We’ve officially entered the era of 5G, sort of. Verizon has followed through on its promise to light up a consumer 5G network for home internet service in a handful of cities. However, other wireless operators are keen to point out Verizon is taking a shortcut, and the service it rolled out isn’t technically the 5G we’re all going to use in the coming years. Whether or not this is really 5G depends on who you ask.

Verizon says its new 5G Home service will provide customers in select areas of Indianapolis, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Houston with a maximum data speed of 940 Mbps. You won’t necessarily get that kind of speed, but Verizon says 5G Home should run reliably at 300 Mbps. This service is essentially running on the network Verizon has been using to test 5G, and it’s not the same technology that will eventually come to phones.

Verizon calls its homebrew network “5G TF,” which is a proprietary standard separate from 5G New Radio (NR). The 3GPP has been working to finalize the 5G NR standard for several years, and the process accelerated recently over concern that Verizon would move forward with more 5G TF deployments.

5G TF is less robust than 5G NR, and that means it’s not scalable. For example, it only operates on 28GHz millimeter wave frequencies, which is what Verizon uses for 5G right now. In addition, it’s locked to 2×2 MIMO for just two download antenna branches on devices.

Thankfully, Verizon won’t be rolling this incompatible standard out widely. True 5G NR should be available in the coming months. That means Verizon will have to go through and completely replace the 5G hardware it has deployed for 5G Home. Verizon says it’s going to do that, but not until the hardware meets its standards, whatever that means. It may end up leaving people on 5G TF connections for a long time while it works on mobile deployments.

Verizon is clearly anxious to declare victory with as the first to deploy a 5G network, but it took a shortcut to get there. It might be nice if 5G Home was based on 5G NR out of the gate, but it could be worse. Verizon owns all the network hardware, and it says it will replace that free of charge for subscribers as necessary. It won’t matter to most consumers what kind of radios are in their 5G Home modem. At least Verizon isn’t sticking 5G TF hardware in phones.

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