Verizon and AT&T have been promoting their progress towards building 5G networks, but to make mobile 5G a reality, small cell sites are going to be needed to provide coverage in busy areas and bridge the gaps between the network towers. Qualcomm has now announced their 5G New Radio platform, FSM100xx, which will deliver gigabit data speeds to small cells.
The new hardware from Qualcomm is just another piece of the larger puzzle that will make up true, usable 5G service. Despite all the hype from carriers, their initial rollouts alone will not equate to 5G being immediately available to all users in the area. Commitments like this from Qualcomm and others will help make 5G accessible!
On CNBC this week, Verizon exec Lowell McAdam spoke about the progress Verizon has made with their 5G plans and excited millions of SoCal residents when he stated that Los Angeles will join Sacramento as a 5G test market this year. “We bought 36 million miles of fiber so we can have big pipes feeding the cells. We will have hundreds of megahertz of bandwidth to deliver the whole suite of services of 5G,” McAdam said.
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Verizon announced today in their first-quarter earnings call that it has started deploying commercial nodes in three markets in the US in support of their planned launch of their fixed 5G network later this year. “We are quickly approaching the launch date of our residential broadband service,” said Verizon CFO Matt Ellis. Sacramento is the only market Verizon has named so far; the other two markets won’t be announced until closer to the launch.
Huawei made a splash at their Global Analyst Summit in Shenzhen this week, showing off their plans for 5G. Counterpoint Analyst Neil Shah tweeted throughout the event, sharing the announcements along with his commentary. Perhaps the most exciting announcement was that Huawei will be launching a 5G smartphone in the second half of 2019 running its own 5G chip.
