Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Verizon kicks off wireless 5G testing in the U.S.

By
Nationwide 4G LTE has been available in the U.S. for more than a year now, offering up to 100 Mbps in speed. However, Verizon wants to push the wireless industry to even faster speeds. On Monday at Mobile World Congress, Verizon announced that it has begun testing a 5G network in the United States.
Recommended Videos

The carrier has partnered with a number of telecom firms including Intel, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and Qualcomm. An entire faux home was constructed to test reception in the same type of environments consumers will use it in, with the same type of devices. In the above video, Verizon taxes the network with a number of 4K TVs, all streaming video at once, as well as a number of other business and personal devices, all in the same area.

Related

5G networks are capable of reaching speeds of 1Gbps and feature a vast array of improvements to latency, coverage, and efficiency over 4G LTE. Verizon chief information and technology architect, Roger Gurnani, told CNet that the 5G network will be capable of faster speeds than Google Fiber. That’s a bold claim, since Google Fiber is seriously speedy. Gurani also said that Verizon’s tests show that 5G is 30 to 50 times faster than the current U.S. 4G network.

In real-life use cases, 5G wireless should be able to download Guardians of the Galaxy in 15 seconds, compared to the 6 minutes it takes on 4G LTE, according to Gurnani. Streaming video, loading large images and animations, as well as playing online games will all be enhanced with 5G wireless. Of course, Verizon could decide to impose heavy data caps to limit how much 5G data customers use.

One exciting potential use is to have surgeons perform operations across the country using integrated robotics. The Internet of Things is another market bound to be enhanced by faster wireless speeds. Even though the smart home devices will be connected to home broadband, the mobile is expected to be the hub and must be able to communicate on wireless or broadband.

While the results so far are promising, this is just an early trial for the new connectivity standard, and that it will be some time still until we can expect it to be commercially available for the rest of us. Early estimates suggest it could arrive at some point in 2017.

5G wireless is currently being tested in South Korea, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. South Korea was the first to begin testing of the new network standard in 2008, and the U.K. followed suit with its own research facility in 2012. So far, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have no plans to test 5G wireless in the U.S. before 2017.

Updated on 02-23-2016 by Jon Martindale

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
David Curry
David Curry
Former Digital Trends Contributor
David has been writing about technology for several years, following the latest trends and covering the largest events. He is…
What is 5G UW? The real meaning behind the icon on your phone
Woman holding up smartphone with speed test results on Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network.

You've probably noticed that there's been much more hype around 5G than for any of the wireless technologies that came before. Some of that is just marketing, of course; we are living in an increasingly connected era, and there are far more people toting smartphones now than there were in 2012 when 4G/LTE was just beginning to go mainstream. However, it's also not an exaggeration to say that with considerably faster speeds and the ability to handle many more devices, 5G is a much bigger step into the next stage of global connectivity. You've also probably noticed it yourself with a "5G UW" icon at the top of your phone.

As with most new technologies, 5G comes with some new challenges for both carriers and consumers. One of the most significant of these has been working out the best way to deploy 5G services across the much wider range of frequencies that it's capable of operating on. This wasn't nearly as significant a problem in the days of 3G and 4G/LTE services, which all operated in a much narrower range of radio spectrum.

Read more
What is 5G? Speeds, coverage, comparisons, and more
The 5G UW icon on the Samsung Galaxy S23.

It's been years in the making, but 5G — the next big chapter in wireless technology — is finally approaching the mainstream. While we haven't yet reached the point where it's available everywhere, nearly all of the best smartphones are 5G-capable these days, and you're far more likely to see a 5G icon lit up on your phone than not.

There's more to 5G than just a fancy new number, though. The technology has been considerably more complicated for carriers to roll out since it covers a much wider range of frequencies than older 4G/LTE technology, with different trade-offs for each. It's also a much farther-reaching wireless technology, promising the kind of global connectivity that was once merely a dream found in futuristic sci-fi novels.

Read more
What is 5G UC? Here’s what that icon on your phone really means
5G logo on the Motorola Edge (2022).

If you own a 5G-capable smartphone — which are all of the best phones today — there’s a good chance you’ve seen different 5G network icons showing up in your status bar. It’s a stark contrast to the pre-5G days when your phone showed “4G” or “LTE” no matter where you went.

It can get a bit confusing to see a 5G indicator one moment and then “5G UC” or “5G UW” the next. It’s not something you need to worry too much about, as you don’t usually have much control over it, but it’s still helpful to understand what these different symbols mean — and why they matter.
The humble beginnings of 5G

Read more