Verizon exceeds 5G build plan for 2021 and focuses resources on C-Band expansion

Verizon announced the company has exceeded its year-end target of 14,000 new 5G Ultra Wideband cells sites, providing phone service to parts of 87 US cities, 5G Home to parts of 65 cities and 5G Business Internet to parts of 62 cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and, launching December 9, Athens (GA), Knoxville (TN) and Tacoma (WA). Verizon has been working diligently, securing agreements with tower partners, installing C-band equipment, and driving performance of 5G on C-band. Verizon’s network team has already deployed 5G Ultra Wideband equipment to thousands of cell sites and will continue aggressive expansion into the new year to meet its market promise of providing 5G Ultra Wideband service to 100 million people by the end of the first quarter of 2022 using C-Band spectrum. The massive 5G Ultra Wideband expansion will initially involve deploying new C-Band equipment on macro cell towers, leveraging Verizon’s award-winning LTE network infrastructure. This rapid expansion will also involve deploying the new 5G Ultra Wideband service using small cells, enhancing both access to and the capacity of 5G using C-band spectrum.  In addition to the expansion of 5G access through mobility, fixed wireless access, and private networks, Verizon and its suppliers have continued to push the limits of speed on 5G. In recent field tests, using 100MHz and 200Mhz of C-band spectrum, the company has seen speeds of 1.5 Gbps and 3 Gbps, respectively.