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Verizon’s Twitter support account has told customers to “turn on LTE” if they want to save their phone’s battery.
The implication, of course, is that 5G drains a customer’s phone battery faster than 4G. And the irony, of course, is that 5G is ubiquitous in Verizon’s advertising machine.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the operator’s suggestion generated a lot of coverage among tech news posts. And this projector pushed Verizon to delete the Tweet in question.
For those familiar with 5G and other networking technologies, the situation is hardly surprising. 4G, and 3G before it, caused similar battery discharges in the early days, before maturing. 5G is clearly no different.
Verizon offers two “flavors” of 5G, one fast and one slow. The fast, dubbed 5G Ultra Wideband by Verizon, offers speeds above 1 Gbps, but only covers about 1% of the US population. The other, dubbed 5G Nationwide by Verizon, is widely available, but not much faster than 4G.
It’s unclear which version of 5G Tech Support Verizon was referring to, and it usually doesn’t matter anyway. After all, there are few reasons for Verizon customers ?? or almost anyone else ?? to subscribe to 5G.
Indeed, so far there are hardly any mainstream apps requiring 5G. Indeed, one of the few widely touted 5G services in the industry ?? the cloud gaming offer Hatch ?? recently closed shop.
Carriers continue to grapple with this problem. For example, Verizon offered an augmented reality game powered by 5G to customers who attended the recent Super Bowl game at Raymond James Stadium in Florida.
But such examples are rare, and they are certainly not worth the monthly 5G access fee.
That doesn’t mean 5G won’t generate revenue for Verizon. The operator continues to expand 5G opportunities in the enterprise sector. And there’s a good chance that 5G will eventually power all kinds of sophisticated consumer services in the future, when the market matures a bit more.
But for regular, everyday consumers here in 2021, there is little reason to leave 5G turned on. And just about everyone in the industry ?? including the Verizon technical support team ?? known.
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?? Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G and Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano
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