Verizon Begins Rolling Out Its 5G Wireless Network In Chicago, Minneapolis (cnbc.com)

Verizon announced today that it has turned on its 5G wireless network in Chicago and Minneapolis -- two of the first markets in the world to receive this next-gen network. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg told CNBC that the company will activate 30 additional markets this year. From a report: Vestberg added that Verizon is unlikely to see any impact on revenue from people who upgrade to new 5G phones until around 2021. This network complements Verizon's existing "5G Home" service which launched in October in select areas and is a wireless alternative to a traditional cable-based home internet connection, but does not work far beyond the walls of your home.

Verizon said the wireless network will give customers access to peak speeds up to 1 Gbps. That's about 10 times faster than you might traditionally find on the LTE connection you have now. Put plainly: You'll be able to download movies in seconds instead of minutes. Only a select number of phones will support the network at first. Samsung will launch a Galaxy S10 5G model later this quarter that will be exclusive to Verizon to start. AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint will begin to sell it in the second half of the year. That leaves the Motorola Z3 as the only phone that supports Verizon's new 5G network right now, and it requires a separate accessory to work on it.

Comments

Im rolling something out

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, my DAMN balls, for u to suck

5G

[Anonymous Coward]

Telstra, Australia's largest Telco, already has quite a few 5G sites up and running... so yeah not first by any stretch...

Re: 5G

[Anonymous Coward]

First to receive Verizon's 5g. Press release puffery carefully crafted to make mountains out of molehills.

Re: 5G

[stealth_finger]

First to receive Verizon's 5g. Press release puffery carefully crafted to make mountains out of molehills.

It's like when they ranked in the top 7 (or whatever). So you're 7th then.

Re:5G

[Drethon]

Not to mention the redefinition of 5G, since full 4G was defined as up to 1 Gbps down and 5G was defined as over 1 Gbps.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.o...

People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm about to move to an undeveloped plot of land where it will be more convenient for me to access the internet on my laptop by hotspotting my cell phone, than to jump
on the grid, uploading videos for GoFundMe. Obviously good to have decent speed for real shit I need to accomplish. LTE is fine for that.

What practical application is there for having gigabit (250 megabytes per second for those who don't know) on a mobile device in a city? Is there actually any "consumer level" mobile technology task that needs gigabit speeds that can't be better accomplished by a computer on a wifi network?

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Joe_Dragon]

to make big bucks at $10/GB GIG an SEC = $60 /hr

Re: People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

You eard it here second

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[SirAstral]

There actually are many potential applications for these speeds, but lets break it down to a couple of simple use case senarios.

Total throughput alone is enough to justify it. The reason for increasing bandwidth also reduces latency because more per second can be transmitted and received. Or in laymens terms... (yes this will be a gross over simplification so don't go crazy about it) If your can only do 1G speeds and everyone needs at least 0.01G to function then only 100 people can effectively use that network at any given time. If usage is low, then yea this is find. But if the business has 1000 customers and they all try to use it at the same time... a lot of people are going to have problems due to congestion. Now... if you move to 5G and people still really only need 0.01G to function you can now support 5 times as many or 500 active users. Which means that the network could support more people and folks will have less latency because when they do receive data it gets to them faster, even if its only a little bit, and they get their usage done before the next group of folks try to use it.

So, does everyone need 250MB/s of through put? The answer is yes, even when they do not think they do. Air space has limited bandwidth depending on the protocols and technology, this means you share the same wire up if you are using the same tower as those around you and you have to share that bandwidth. And when you can download that 25kb web page in 1/2 a second on 1G you can download that page in 1/8 of a second on 5G, that really is important!

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[viperidaenz]

except this isn't bandwidth to a central server, where you need capacity for all your customers.

this is bandwidth between a cellphone and the local cell tower, which for 5G networks are going to cover crazy small areas. and each of these towers has multiple antennas and frequency bands, so it's not all shared either.

increasing bandwidth doesn't always decrease latency. If the new protocols require minimum packet sizes, like some encryption and compression algorithms, you end up using more wire bandwidth for the same data, or delaying data until that packet is big enough.

I'm reminded of an old wireless broadband technology, which was based on WCDMA but also incorporated TDMA to increase peak bandwidth.
Bandwidth increased but it had a negative impact on latency and jitter, as packets had to be scheduled to fit in the time divisions.

Re: People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, precious, do you think people will pay you to make videos of your dumb millenial ass failing to survive with any menial labor involved? Is that why you have a gofundme? Idiot.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your work internet will be wifi-router-5g. Your home internet the same. Phones don't need it. If thats not their plan they are idiots. All of us will be sterile also because of our cooked organs.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[AHuxley]

When their other internet is a paper insulated wireline telco protected by NN laws? Yes they do need new tech.
Games that download in full. Then need tens of more GB as a new patch days later.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[SirAstral]

I am not even sure it is worth responding to you because your entire argument is a strawman fallcy and total non-sequitur all mixed up in a fantasy load of ignorance.

"except this isn't bandwidth to a central server, where you need capacity for all your customers." > non-sequitur you clearly missed the point of what I said, perhaps I should have detailed my post more to an excruciating and exacting degree to avoid folks like you that like to get into ultra meaningless minutiae from trying to fluff the commentary with meaningless prattle.

"this is bandwidth between a cellphone and the local cell tower,"

Exactly and the ONLY thing I am discussing here. It is simple science fact, not a mystery of any kind. The faster a wireless user can complete their data transaction and end their portion of consumption of the air space, the lower latency will be experienced overall by all parties participating in that same airspace.

Think of it like a road, where even though the speed limit is always the same, it still takes you longer to get where you want to go when a lot of people are also using that road. You have added latency from collisions (yes data has those), you also have latency from people entering and exiting the road way (guess what... data does that fucking shit too!), and you have other things like road hazards that cause trouble (say holy shit to nature just being nature cause DATA HAS THAT PROBLEM TOO!). Guess what... if the speed limit got increased or the "lanes" are increase the latency goes down if the same number of cars are using it. The same actual scientifically already proven principle applies here as well!

The rest of your post is entirely not even important for this discussion.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Known Nutter]

Guess what... if the speed limit got increased or the "lanes" are increase the latency goes down if the same number of cars are using it.

Which is all well and good until more cars show up, as they inevitably do. Guess what? That shit happens in data, too!

I'm not saying you shouldn't expand the road. I'm saying don't pretend it actually solves anything. Eventually, you'll be right back where you started -- especially when a large amount of people on the road increasingly find useless ego-driven destinations that do little more than take up space.

Car analogies are fun!

Re: People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for actually using your brain to answer my question, unlike the narcs before.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[thegarbz]

I'm not saying you shouldn't expand the road. I'm saying don't pretend it actually solves anything.

You're right. Honestly I don't understand why these mega cities bother with multi lane roads or highways. Your comment is the dumbest comment by car analogy proxy I have read on Slashdot, ever. And I browse at -1.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Drethon]

if (when?) we can get every mobile device at gigbit plus on mobile internet, we can do away with home routers and all devices just connect to mobile instead. if the price is competitive with wired internet. Seems it is possible the price will be higher per month, but not have to deal with the cost of installing fiber. Which will probably mean the providers will all stop installing cable and force us to mobile.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[TheCastro1689]

If you were right cities wouldn't expand their wifi networks and coffee shops and McDonalds wouldn't have wifi either. There are multiple avenues and ways to accomplish this task. Just like more public transport and less centralizing of commercial areas alleviate traffic.

Re:People really need 250MB/s on their phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use iCloud Photo Library and have just shot a whole bunch of vacation videos at 4K

ISOs

[grasshoppa]

Whoa now, we call them Linux ISOs, not movies, to throw off the fuzz.

Re:ISOs

[Anonymous Coward]

I nominate Blank Panther distro of the year!

You can hit your limit in just seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

then the fat cash for verizon starts rolling in.

Re: No one will ever need more than 640k

[Anonymous Coward]

How about higher quality real time video where we have to turn off video so the voice channel doesnt break up?

How about higher quality video in general?

How about faster access to everything? Maybe you are used to waiting because you live on a farm? I do not and am perfectly happy getting faster speeds. Why would I not?

You could have made the same argument about going from 1200 baud to 56k. Very few people can read at 56k. 1200 baud is enough for anyone to login to their local bbs.

1Gbps peak?

[viperidaenz]

Didn't Verizon already say you can hit 1.45Gbps peak on their 4G LTE network?
Why is their new 5G slower?
https://www.engadget.com/2018/...

Re:1Gbps peak?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

1.45Gbps LTE requires 6-carrier aggregation. Qualcomm's 5G x50 modem has a theoretical peak of 5Gbps with 8 carriers, so the current 1Gpbs real-world performance is probably only dual-carrier. Plenty more headroom to exploit down the road.

Re:1Gbps peak?

[thegarbz]

Did Verizon say you can hit 1.45Gbps peak on their 4G network at launch? Don't think about it, the answer is no. Their 5G network launched with much faster speed than their 4G network.

The speed is not exclusively linked to the number of Gs

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no device to handle this. In Australia they get 1000Mbs on LTE now, with hardware that supports LTE Category 20. http://www.techguide.com.au/news/internet-news/netgear-launches-nighthawk-m2-mobile-router-capable-2gbps-speeds-telstra/

Seconds instead of minutes?

[scdeimos]

It's only 1Gbps. It would be a very short movie that could be completely downloaded in under 60 seconds on a 1Gbps connection.

Re:Seconds instead of minutes?

[stealth_finger]

It's only 1Gbps. It would be a very short movie that could be completely downloaded in under 60 seconds on a 1Gbps connection.

You think only a 'very' short movie could be less than 7.5GB? Fuck man, what formats do you use?

Re:Seconds instead of minutes?

[magarity]

You think only a 'very' short movie could be less than 7.5GB? Fuck man, what formats do you use?

4K RAW ?

Re:Seconds instead of minutes?

[quintus_horatius]

His favorite movie is Logistics.

Re:Seconds instead of minutes?

[iamhassi]

You do realize video file size is entirely dependent on bitrate not length of movie, right? You could have a 10 hour video or a 1 minute video both be 1 gigabyte just by changing the bitrate.

Nice Information

[Anonymous Coward]

NiceThanks For This Information

Did they use Huawei equipment???

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they use Huawei equipment???
A typical poorly written news story, missing basic information.

On what planet is 1Gb = 250MB??

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, have Slashdotters become this *literally retarded*?

Aside from some ancient computers, 1 byte has 8 bits! Even my grandma knows that!

So 1Gb/s is 128MB/s!

And even if you mean giga BAUD, it'd be 100MB/s.

How the hell did you even manage to come up with 250MB/s?

7.68GB is plenty for a movie.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's about the size of a full DVD.
Videos from file sharing usually come at ~1.2GB per hour of video for really top notch full HD quality.
So 7.68GB would be enough for OK 90mins 4K or hours of insane quality HD.

and?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the magic question is how much?

Already Here

[crow]

I had a 5G connection on my Galaxy S8 in Boston last week. Thank you AT&T.

Seems like overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

To me this seems like a money grab. 4G is already PLENTY to stream video, and 5G's range is abysmal. They just want to sell millions of towers everywhere. What a waste of frequency bands, electricity, time, money, materials. No reason to have 5G

Re: No one will ever need more than 640k

[TheCastro1689]

You need a 10th the speed (25mps) the top comment asks about for 4K streaming from Netflix. What higher video quality in general are you talking about?

I already have 5G Express from AT&T

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon needs to get with the program. I've had 5G Express from AT&T for a month and it's amazing!

Be still my heart

[argStyopa]

Minneapolis was the first to get SOMETHING?