As each carrier races to finish out 2021 strong, Verizon has surpassed its goal of rolling out 14,000 new 5G Ultra Wideband (mmWave) cell sites by the end of the year. Verizon now provides 5G phone service to parts of 87 US cities, 5G home to parts of 65 cities, and 5G Business Internet to parts of 62 cities.
Verizon noted it beat its initial goals for coverage, stating that 5G Home is available in 5X the number of markets compared to 2020 and that 5G Business Internet is in 3X the number of cities projected for 2021.
CEO Hans Vestberg hinted at this news at the 2021 UBS Global TMT Conference, noting that Verizon has made huge progress across its five “vectors of growth” with expectations of growing more in 2022. Vestberg said, “I have to say ’22 is an important year, and we feel really excited about it.”
Kyle Malady, CTO of Verizon, recently said of the carrier’s growth, “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 reach its C-band goals, Verizon partnered with Crown Castle and SBA Communications to expedite its C-band deployment and has been conducting trials to improve its aggregation of C-band spectrum with mmWave spectrum. During a test in May 2021, Verizon achieved speeds of 4.3 Gbps.
Verizon’s Senior VP of engineering, Heidi Hemmer, told RCR Wireless News that the company plans to cover 250 million POPs in 2024. Vestberg told investors separately that Verizon will invest another $10 billion into rolling out C-band coverage over the next two years.
Source: RCR Wireless