Amidst the concerns over 5G’s C-Band spectrum, and cold weather, journalists and analysts went to the streets to test. They received a sneak peek of Verizon’s pre-commercial C-band 5G service in downtown Los Angeles, complete with handsets tuned to the C-band.
Among these testers was Bill Ho, a principal analyst at 556 Ventures. He later posted on Twitter that he was able to get download speeds of 649 Mbps, with upload of 63 Mbps.
The tests were conducted at an ice-rink within the LA Live entertainment district of downtown and detailed in this article. This is a well trafficked area of LA, a few blocks wide, where they set up a few devices to access the network.
Infrastructure in the area was supplied by Ericsson, and only available to these supplied devices (i.e. Samsung S21, iPhone 12, and iPhone 13). C-band nodes were often a half a mile away from the test area and still provided broadband speed and performance. Some reporters also used their own phones which would have had access to LTE and mmWave, but not C-band.
Verizon’s intent was to show off the unique power of C-band – specifically on 60Mhz – where on an unencumbered network with few users the speed and capacity are compatible with millimeter wave (mmWave). Though the 3.7 GHz C-band has much farther range.
Verizon hasn’t provided an exact time for when the commercial C-band service will launch, but reiterated its commitment to cover 100 million people by the end of March. “We’re confident we’ll do that,” a spokesperson said on Friday.
Now, the real question is whether Verizon can catch up to T-Mobile in mid-band 5G in a way that’s fast enough, and effective enough, so that T-Mobile’s advantage doesn’t significantly hurt Verizon’s business.
“T-Mobile is building out simply because they’ve got it and they know that they want to extend the competitive gap,” Ho said. From Verizon’s standpoint, they’re moving very fast – and from AT&T’s standpoint, “they’re doing it too, but maybe not as telegraphed as much as Verizon – and that is to limit the gap, or minimize the gap” that T-Mobile has created.
That, in part, is because “in my opinion, everybody is going after enterprise,” Ho added. That said, there are a lot of 5G growth sectors, such as fixed wireless access (FWA) and enterprise, both areas where T-Mobile intends to grow. Verizon has a huge enterprise base, so they need to bring that up to show and minimize any competitive gaps. T-Mobile says they’re two years ahead,” and that’s a snapshot in time.
Once Verizon turns on that C-band, “they kind of minimize that whole argument,” leading to questions as to whether or not T-Mobile’s head-start is indeed two years, Ho added. “It’s really the marketing message that T-Mobile has been saying for a while,” he said. “If Verizon gets it done fast, then they can minimize that marketing message totally.”