Verizon expands 5G home internet

The seven new locations for 5G home internet includes Akron, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Columbia, South Carolina; Durham, North Carolina; Fresno, California; Spokane, Washington; and St. Petersburg, Florida. The service uses millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum with maximum download speeds up to 1 Gbps, but with typical download speeds of 300 Mbps. A total of 47 markets are now available for Verizon’s 5G home internet. Verizon is also offering a new router that can provide access to 4G service, but is for the first time also capable of expanding to 5G service when it becomes available. Meanwhile, Verizon has pushed its LTE home internet to a number of new areas including urban, suburban and rural America. The service includes download speeds of 25 Mbps with peak download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Cellular home internet is seen as a new way to compete against traditional broadband technologies or appeal to those users who have no current access to broadband speeds. While LTE is not competitive to current cable, fiber or DSL speeds, 5G is highly competitive to these technologies given the faster download speeds and higher bandwidth available.