The entire U.S. just stopped when the Coronavirus was deemed a global pandemic as the number of confirmed cases grew tremendously everyday. Most offices across the U.S. closed or had their workforce working from home. During that time, Verizon has noticed that their bandwidth usage has surged 75%.
It’s hard to imagine the world resuming their normal lives after the pandemic. And it’s easy to say that Covid-19 will not only affect our habits over the next few weeks and months, but will have long-lasting repercussions on how we live, from work, commute and communicate according to some analysts.
It feels as if this pandemic went from 0 to 60 in seconds, and all of a sudden the entire world is working remotely. From your everyday conference room meetings now being done via Zoom, shopping and moseying through grocery aisles is now being done online, and instead of going to the movies you’re streaming- it all puts a massive strain on our existing cable broadband network.
Everyone in the tech industry touts 5G as “100x faster than 4G speeds” but aside from that, 5G’s biggest draw is that it can sustain more devices hooked up to one small cell (a mini cell tower) at one time with a lower latency. It’s also less expensive to deploy than cables, however mmWave stations still need a bunch.
Carriers are still holding strong in the face of their networks ability to deliver performance in these times of need but Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC member said, “We’re going to have a big stress test on our networks” and “these are still early days.”
An obvious solution to this increased bandwidth usage is to rollout 5G faster. Verizon’s CEO, Hans Vestberg, has said that half of the U.S. will have 5G access by the end of 2020, including underserved rural areas. This may or may not still come to fruition due to the equipment supply chain disruptions caused by the coronavirus.
As it appears now, it doesn’t look like the nation will be “back to normal” any time soon and with everyone online as much as they are now, the government is getting ready for more spectrum releases and 5G research incentives. 5G networks can possibly roll out a bit sooner than expected due to the increased needs of remote communication and entertainment demands from the entire nation.
Source: Phone Arena