Verizon had already came out not too long ago and said that they’d be working on their 5G network in 2016. And they expected to have it actually available in a handful of markets by the end of 2016 and into 2017. Verizon’s CEO noted at a Business Insider conference this week, that the company plans to have their headquarters in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, lit up with 5G speeds as soon as January. He also noted that they’ll be in San Francisco, New York, Boston and a few other markets next year, and hope to be rolling it out more commercially in 2016, and even more in 2017. Lowell McAdam stated, “I showed my board the 5G service in November, and you don’t ever go to a board with something that’s not real.”
The company is also stating that speeds of their 5G network would be around 1Gbps, that’s about 200 times the speed you typically get on Verizon’s LTE network today (arguably due to the congestion in their network from having so many devices connected to it). McAdam also pointed out that 5G is more designed for Video, and that it will help the company provide more video services into customers’ homes without needing to run fiber into those locations. Around 70% of the traffic on their network is currently video, additionally their network traffic has increased by 75% each year.
The big question for many Verizon subscribers is how much 5G will cost. McAdam didn’t give a specific figure on that but did state that”I think your bills are not going to be a lot lower than they are today.” So no concrete numbers on what it’ll cost us once 5G is available, however if we look back at 4G LTE a few years ago when many of us were making the switch from 3G. Prices didn’t really go up, however we did move away from unlimited data (at least with Verizon and AT&T) and into capped plans. So we may see some new data caps come with 5G, but we’re not too sure about seeing current plans go up. It’s still a bit too early to tell, actually.