Verizon has reconfirmed what it said in September 2015 about launching commercial 5G (technically, pre-5G) service in the United States in 2017.
It seems likely that the initial use case will be mobile entertainment video “I showed my board the service in November,” said Lowell McAdam, Verizon CEO. “You don’t ever go to a board with something that’s not real.”
A Verizon executive had said in September that Verizon will begin field trials of 5G technology within the next year, with plans for start of commercial service, in some form, in 2017.
If you recall the introduction of Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G, you remember that the first emphasis was on mobile data access, not phones, simply because suppliers had not yet produced them in mass quantities, and one initial early adopter segment were users who wanted much-faster access for their personal computers.
Since it is highly possible the full set of 5G standards will not be fully ratified by 2017, Verizon might be in a pre-5G mode, operating a commercial service that will appeal most to some user segments whose business cases are insensitive to use of a “pre-standard” but largely compliant deployment scenario.
South Korea hopes its wireless carriers can deploy a trial 5G network in 2018, in time for the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Japan hopes to have a 5G network running in time for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The Chinese government, meanwhile, has also pushed for the aggressive deployment of 5G technology.
You might doubt Verizon, or the other mobile carriers, can move that fast.
Verizon and others have moved quickly in the past, though. When Verizon said in 2008 it was going to commercialized 4G LTE, Verizon did so in 2010.
If you use the rule of thumb that the mobile industry introduces a next generation network about every decade, that would suggest 2020 is the point at which Verizon would want to deploy 5G, nationwide. So 2017 might be an even-faster introduction than is typical.
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