Still no coverage maps being made public though.
Verizon announced today that it is launching 5G in four more cities today. That includes Atlanta, Detroit, Indianapolis and Washington, DC.
As is the case with Verizon’s current list of 5G cities, coverage in those cities are still pretty spotty, hence the reason why there are no publicly available coverage maps. Though the ones we have seen put together by third-parties show that you’ll get 5G in a few areas. And we do mean few areas. It’s not blanketed coverage on the markets that it has launched in. Which is unfortunate, but at least it is available.
Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network, as it likes to refer to it, is only available for downloads. The upload side of things are still on 4G LTE. Which just goes to show you early it is in the 5G race. But the download speeds do look pretty impressive on 5G. Verizon was able to get 1.5Gbps down in Dearborn, Michigan. Which is just outside of Detroit. And one of the areas that has 5G coverage as of today.
The reason why 5G is so limited, in coverage right now, particularly with Verizon and AT&T, is because it is using millimeter-wave or mmWave for its network. Meanwhile Sprint is using sub-6GHz, which is what everyone will be using in the next few years. The main difference is that mmWave cannot cover as much area as sub-6GHz can. But mmWave does give you a lot more bandwidth.
This is why we are seeing Verizon pulling down speeds of over a gigabit, meanwhile Sprint is closer to about 300-400Mbps. But Sprint is actually covering entire markets when it launches them, instead of just a few neighborhoods.
Verizon says that in Detroit, it is mainly Dearborn, Livonia and Troy – including around the Troy-Oakland Airport. It doesn’t sound like it is actually going to be available downtown just yet. It seems like Verizon is focusing on lesser populated areas of these cities first. Likely to get a handful of people on the network, but not so many that the network then gets overwhelmed and has issues. It’s the smart way to do things.
Verizon has not gotten back to us yet on what areas of Atlanta, Indianapolis and Washington, DC have 5G. But it’ll likely be pretty similar to Detroit.
It’s important to remember that your current phone most likely does not support 5G. So you’re going to need to buy a new one to use 5G. It’s not really recommended to buy one yet, seeing as we are still on first-generation 5G modems – meaning that battery life is absolutely trash. But Verizon does have a handful of 5G phones available. Like the Moto Z3, Moto Z4, Samsung Galaxy S10 5G and LG V50 ThinQ 5G.
So if you are looking into giving Verizon’s 5G network a try, then you can head to their website here (or via the button below) and check out what 5G devices are available right now.