Independent testing conducted by Signal Research Group (SRG) claims that Verizon’s 5G Home network is performing as advertised. The research firm tested the speed of the carrier’s 5G network using both outdoor and indoor modems within the Houston area, and the company tested the network speed in line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight scenarios, as well as in the presence of obstructions like trees and buildings between the modem and the cell site. Even though SRG coordinated with Verizon for the speed test, researchers claim that Verizon only provided them with modems and directed them towards the location of the small cells, which serve as the base stations for the carrier’s 5G network.
Speed tests conducted by SRG show that the carrier’s 5G network offers download speeds between 600 to 800Mbps and upload speeds of up to 250Mbps. The figures fall within the service provider’s advertised download range of 300Mbps to 1Gbps, although this network performance will likely be seen only in unloaded networks. Therefore, consumers may expect the network to slow down once more customers connect to Verizon’s 5G service due to network congestion. However, even in an uncongested network, customers may still experience lower download speeds than advertised, although it is attributed to third-party services that transmit data at slower rates. For example, when SRG downloaded a file from Google Drive, they only measured download speeds between 200 to 300 Mbps, which is less than half than what Verizon’s 5G service can offer. SRG further noted that the network still offered download and upload speeds in the range of hundreds of megabits per second even at a distance of six blocks away from the cell site and in the presence of trees and buildings between the small cell and the modem.
Verizon’s 5G Home network started operating earlier this month, and it is currently available in Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. This service utilizes the 28GHz millimeter wave spectrum and a proprietary air interface known as 5G TF that incorporates some of the technologies that will later be used in the 5G New Radio standard. Unfortunately, Verizon’s proprietary air interface is not scalable, and the carrier has already stated that it will replace its existing 5G network with the standards-compliant version of 5G once network equipment becomes available.