Sascha Segan

There's a gap right now between what 5G phones can do and what US 5G networks can do. Both Verizon and AT&T absolutely flatlined on performance between 2020 and 2021, and despite 5G being around for over two years, carriers are letting us down. There are a number of answers for why this is happening; we're still reeling from former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's mistakes. Pai didn’t prioritize making mid-band spectrum available for 5G, and that set us back by at least a year.

Verizon is rolling out an enhancement to 4G that absolutely blows away its own "nationwide" 5G, and that shows good signs for the new C-band 5G coming in 2022. Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS), a set of airwaves close to the C-band, has quietly started rolling out nationwide. I got a tip on two locations near me, so I went to check it out. CBRS appeared on sites configured for all of Verizon's latest technologies: 4G, its "nationwide" Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) 5G, and its super-speedy ultra wideband (UWB) 5G.

Starlink is currently in a semi-public beta, serving more than 10,000 users at speeds up to 170 Mbps, with no data caps. Ookla located US counties with at least 30 Starlink samples since December, and charted Starlink's speeds county by county against all other fixed internet providers.

In a recent article, I spotlight 50 US and 10 Canadian cities based on data from Ookla Speedtest, BroadbandNow, BestPlaces, the US Census, and StatCan. The list is quirky, on purpose. We carefully tried to mix large cities, smaller cities, and small towns, with a focus on affordability and high-speed internet access.

For our 11th year of speed testing major wireless networks across the country, we drove to 26 US cities to see if 5G lives up to the hype. The answer: Not quite yet. While Verizon regains the title of fastest mobile network in our first nationwide 4G and 5G test, the carrier still has very little coverage. And AT&T's and T-Mobile's 5G networks don't help their overall performance much.

Verizon will improve its 4G capacity in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, and Kentucky thanks to a deal with two companies you've probably never heard of—Spotlight Media and MCG—according to Brian Goemmer from Allnet Insights. Spotlight and MCG are controlled by the family of Michael Gelfand, a Florida doctor with a long history of investing in wireless.

[Commentary] For a year now, I've been hoping that 5G networks will inject competition into the home Internet service provider market, but those plans appear to be stalled. iI's possible to use mobile internet as your primary home internet, but so far, mobile service providers have been unwilling to offer the gigabyte buckets that American homes generally seek. With the large, for-profit companies seemingly uninterested in competing with cable, maybe the only way for Americans to get more ISP choice is to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves. The cable monopolies on fast internet may

New CTIA President Meredith Atwell Baker has made her agenda clear: "Our priority has been and will always be spectrum. There was a spectrum drought from 2008, and we have two crazy important auctions coming up.”