Verizon will reserve its best 5G for subscribers to the “premium” plan

If you’re on a basic Verizon plan, you’re going to be stuck with the company’s poorly performing ‘national’ 5G network – even after the critical C-band spectrum went live. The company revealed in an investor presentation and confirmed to The edge that C-band frequencies, and their faster speeds, will only be available to customers benefiting from “premium” unlimited plans. Those with a meter or the basic Start Unlimited plan will be relegated to the slower low-band 5G.

This is basically how the company already treats its super-fast mmWave 5G: Customers on the Basic Unlimited plan don’t have access to this network, whereas Play More, Do More, and Get More Unlimited subscribers do. Customers on metered plans also don’t have access to mmWave, nor do they have C-band, although they can add access to both for an additional fee.

This is bad news for Verizon customers who are hoping C-band would improve on the poor performance they see on the company’s domestic 5G. The network currently uses narrow low-band channels that are not well suited to 5G and relies on a technology called dynamic spectrum sharing to handle 4G and 5G traffic on the same frequencies. As a result, Verizon’s 5G speeds are closer to 4G – and sometimes even slower.

Verizon has been limited by the spectrum it has access to, so it has spent a huge amount in the recent FCC auction of mid-band frequencies known as C-band. This segment of spectrum is ideal for 5G, offering faster speeds than LTE with wider coverage than mmWave at limited range. The company offered $ 45.4 billion on C-band licenses – more than double what AT&T spent. When these blocks of frequencies start to be available at the end of the year, this should significantly boost the performance of the network.

And that $ 45 billion is just the start. Verizon revealed in its investor presentation that it plans to spend an additional $ 10 billion over the next three years on the C-band rollout, beyond its planned capital spending. This is probably the reason why the company is extremely keen to channel its customers into “intensive” plans and uses this C-band spectrum as an incentive.

Verizon also says that in the future all new phones it sells will be C-band compatible. This is already the case for flagships like the Galaxy S21 and iPhone 12 series, but all budget phones or midrange are not compatible with the C band in the United States. It’s one less thing phone buyers need to think about when buying a phone with Verizon, but it also makes it easier for Verizon to tell you about a more expensive plan. And if you follow one of their basic plans, you might hear that sales pitch sooner rather than later.