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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.
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.
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.
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.
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...