Verizon may be launching its “nationwide” 5G network as soon as tomorrow, to sync up with the iPhone 12 launch event, according to new 5G tests we did in Chicago and posters on the Verizon subreddit.
Tomorrow’s iPhone 12 launch is anticipated to include up to four 5G phones, and Verizon is far behind AT&T and T-Mobile on 5G coverage. (That’s a render of one of the new iPhones, above.) According to our 26-city Fastest Mobile Networks tests, Verizon had 3.5 percent 5G availability earlier this summer, as opposed to 38.5 percent for AT&T and 54.2 percent for T-Mobile.
That’s because Verizon chose a fast, but hard-to-build 5G system, called high-band or millimeter-wave, which has very short range. In our tests, Verizon’s millimeter-wave system was much faster than the other two carriers’, but it didn’t carry.
Low-band 5G, on the other hand, lets carriers light up a “5G” icon on lots of phones but delivers essentially 4G performance. AT&T and T-Mobile both focused on low-band 5G to get that indicator lit up. In AT&T’s case, the carrier used a very narrow low-band channel, resulting in a 5G network that (according to our tests) was actually slower than its 4G network.
Verizon doesn’t want to lose the marketing game, though, so it plans to activate dynamic spectrum sharing, or DSS, which flips some of its 4G channels over to 5G to turn on that 5G icon for many people. If the capability is on enough of its low-band towers, Verizon’s 5G could quickly span the nation.
Testing Verizon 5G throughout Chicago on Oct. 11, we saw a “5G” icon appear on one of our phones, without the usual “UWB,” which signifies Verizon’s high-band 5G network. We ran speed tests when the “5G” icon appeared, within the Loop, in River North, along Lake Shore Drive, and on the North Side.
According to posts on Reddit, the low-band 5G icon can appear on Verizon phones that have the Android 11 beta loaded. We have that loaded on some of our phones. Also according to a post on Reddit, the network uses frequency band n5. That’s the original 850Mhz cellular band which has been in use since the 1980s, and it has excellent range. AT&T is using the same band for its poorly-performing nationwide 5G.
Existing 5G phones released after February 2020 should have DSS capabilities. It’s unclear whether they’ll need an update to Android 11 to get them, though, which could delay its arrival on phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 series. While Samsung said it intends to launch an Android 11 update for the Galaxy S20 series this year, that could be any time this year.
How Fast Is Verizon’s Nationwide 5G?
Pre-launch, DSS 5G isn’t impressive, but it doesn’t have the airwaves to pull it off. The chart below compares the DSS 5G speeds we got with the 4G and 5G speeds we found during the Chicago phase of our Fastest Mobile Networks tests earlier this summer.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the 5G being slower than 4G yet. This is pre-launch and either our devices or the network may not have been fully configured. But I think 5G being the same speed as 4G is more relevant, because DSS 5G is really just a shell game. You get faster speeds when you add spectrum to a carrier’s pool. The power of 5G comes from its ability to use wider channels than 4G—up to 100MHz each where 4G channels max out at 20MHz.
DSS simply shifts some existing 4G channels to 5G when they aren’t being used by 4G phones. So you’re going to end up with narrow odds and ends of airwaves that don’t expand the carrier’s portfolio any, but let it show a “5G” indicator for marketing purposes.
Why do DSS anyway? There are reasons to do it from a tech perspective. It pays off later in the game. It lets carriers more quickly achieve “standalone” 5G status where phones don’t have to attach to secondary 4G networks for coverage. That then activates new non-speed-related 5G features like super-low latency, network slicing for high reliability, and an increased number of devices per cell, which eliminates blocked connections. It also lets carriers manage their 4G-to-5G transitions much more easily than they could otherwise.
But most importantly, it lights up that icon.
We’ve contacted Verizon for comment and haven’t heard back yet. The new iPhones will launch at 1 p.m. ET on October 13.
