While we already gathered all the Verizon C-band 5G details that were initially available in a fairly comprehensive article for you a few weeks back, one very important thing that the carrier promised would come after the actual network expansion last Wednesday was an updated coverage map.
Without it, Big Red’s subscribers were left guessing and randomly trying to figure out for themselves through speed tests and other real-world experiments if they were part of the “more than” 100 million people across the nation (theoretically) given instant access to a potentially game-changing new 5G flavor.
But the guessing games are now over, as the promised 5G coverage map is up on Verizon’s official website for anyone to navigate at will. As expected, the blazing fast but terribly spotty mmWave service is no longer shown on the revised map, with the 5G Ultra Wideband network covering slightly slower but much more widespread C-band signals as well.
As highlighted below the map, this is in no way to be treated as a “guarantee of service”, depicting “approximate outdoor coverage” (emphasis on outdoor) while technically taking into account so-called buffer zones around “select” airports, with “actual” coverage at airports still very likely to vary.
That’s an overly complicated and pretentious way of saying you shouldn’t really trust what the map shows you in many places, as evidenced by the always thorough folks over at PCMag. The publication’s recent in-depth testing in just a few New York City neighborhoods revealed crucial differences between Verizon‘s general claims and the technology available for regular users on a daily basis right now.
The same situation is likely to be found elsewhere, especially with this C-band rollout theoretically meant to blanket a lot of smaller cities too, but for what it’s worth, 5G coverage may have already improved since the time of the aforementioned tests, looking virtually guaranteed to improve some more in the next few weeks, months, and well, years.
Together with mmWave, the recently deployed C-band spectrum is advertised as providing 5G Ultra Wideband speeds up to ten times faster than “typical” 4G LTE scores, at least on supported devices with a participating monthly plan activated.
