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Verizon launched its 5G mobile network last week in "selected areas" of Minneapolis and Chicago. A speed test shared by a Verizon spokesperson showed an impressive download speed of 762 Mbps.
But Verizon's unique speed test was conducted near a tower with a clear line of sight on this tower. According to tests done by The Verge and CNET, it's much harder to find a 5G signal elsewhere in Verizon's launch zones.
The two news agencies each have a reporter in the Chicago areas where Verizon says its 5G network is ready. The results were disappointing.
"I visited the Chicago Theater and the Chicago Art Institute, and there was no 5G signal to be found at one or the other place," wrote Verge's reporter. , Chris Welch. "The same goes for Millennium Park.Bean, I became a regular old LTE." These seemingly rare 5G locations were all among the areas where Verizon announced that its "5G coverage is concentrated". When Welch got the 5G, its tests showed download speeds ranging from 410 Mbps to 573 Mbps and downloads from 10 Mbps to 29 Mbps.
CNET reporter Jessica Dolcourt found much the same thing during a one-day trek in parts of Chicago.
"Sometimes, the 5G speeds recorded by the Speedtest.net evaluation test gave us Verizon promised download speeds of over 600 megabits per second (my maximum speed was 634 Mbps)," wrote Dolcourt. "On other occasions, it was closer to 200 Mbps, and on other occasions, the phone claimed to be on 5G but looked a lot like 4G. I had a load test battalion. and download that I was going to try Thursday in downtown Chicago, It was so difficult to keep a 5G connection long enough to run the most basic tests.I therefore had to throw those shots out the window . "
Despite good speed test results, Dolcourt wrote that "the extremely fast speeds of some benchmarking tests did not translate into real gains when downloading large application and video files".
In addition to geographical limitations, the Verizon 5G network only works on a smartphone: the Motorola Moto Z3, and only when the Z3 is connected to the exclusive Verizon 5G Moto Mod attachment.
Dolcourt kept in touch with Verizon and Motorola throughout the day. "They both recognized the startup problems and said that the engineers were following with problems," writes CNET.
It'll be better in a few months, says Verizon
When he was contacted by Ars, Verizon's Vice President of Network Engineering, Mike Haberman, acknowledged that coverage is currently limited. But he said it would improve significantly as Verizon add more cell sites and more spectrum and take advantage of improvements to technologies such as beam guidance.
Haberman also said that Verizon is planning latency improvements. In June 2018, Verizon said that the 5G will generate "latencies of a single millisecond," but last week's Verizon announcement had promised that this latency would be "less than 30 milliseconds".
"I would not necessarily use the blanket you see right now as an approximation of what it will look like in a few months," Haberman told Ars today. "There are many more elements of 5G to add to the system, and many of them can be realized as software."
But Verizon's marketing team strongly criticized the launch last week and Haberman called the initial launch of "a very good first release," which Verizon "wants people to use and exploit."
The initial launch uses a spectrum in the 28 GHz range, much higher than the 700 MHz spectrum used by Verizon for 4G LTE. There is more spectrum available in high frequency ranges, but radio signals are more easily blocked. 5G deployments may therefore require the deployment of multiple cell sites in multiple locations.
But in Chicago and Minneapolis, Haberman said Verizon's 4G network is already so dense that the company places most 5G cells at the same locations as 4G cells. "In these markets, we feel that the density is sufficient," said Haberman, while stating that the density required would vary from one market to the other.
Verizon announces the launch of the 5G mobile service in more than 30 US cities this year.
Verizon charges $ 10 more for 5G
Even though it's hard to find Verizon's 5G network in the only two cities where it exists, Verizon charges $ 10 more per month to use it. You also can not add 5G to any Verizon plan, you must purchase one of Verizon's unlimited plans in order to access the 10G 5G Add-on. (The $ 10 fee is removed for the first three months.)
Given the limited coverage area, it is unlikely that you would get your $ 10 value even if you live in one of two 5G cities. Download speeds are excellent, Welch wrote, "but until you can walk a few blocks and keep a 5G signal, what's the point?"
A spokesman for Verizon told Ars that "it's early" and that "everything is better from here." Verizon also told us an article in Digital Trends, written by a reviewer, which told us "to have a different (less frustrating) experience".
But even the Digital Trends article said that finding a Verizon 5G connection goes back to "looking for gold". Journalist Julian Chokkattu of Digital Trends wrote:
I walked up to five different 5G nodes around downtown Chicago, all located near popular sites like the Magnificent Mile. The description in the Verizon press release of these 5G sites [was] wave – I would have lost a lot of time looking for them if I had not given more precise intersections.
Even then, I still had to make a few comings and goings to find the knot. It's not like I'm automatically connecting to the 5G when I was in the zone. I often needed a line of sight to the node for the phone to connect.
The problem is that the 5G network indicator only appears on the Motorola phone "when you are actively using 5G," noted The Verge. This apparently means that there is no way of knowing if you are in 4G or 5G unless your phone downloads or downloads data.
Haberman explained that this is explained by the fact that early versions of 5G use a "non-autonomous kernel", which relies on 4G control channels to ensure coordination between the phone and the network. When the phone transmits and receives data, whether due to an application refresh in the background or from a phone user trying to use the Internet, the phone goes into 5G.
Verizon 5G will switch to a standalone kernel "within a year or two" and the phones will then display a 5G indicator even when the 5G signal is not actively used, Haberman told Ars.
This early limitation may have made it difficult for the reviewers to identify points for 5G speed testing, but it would appear that Verizon 5G signals would be difficult to find, even if the phone buzzed you every time it passed. in the 5G range.
Haberman reacted positively at the beginning of the deployment, stating, "What we have right now gives you an idea of what 5G can do in terms of throughput and capacity." Haberman said the 5G coverage "will continue to improve rapidly".
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