It’s been less than three weeks since AT&T announced plans to bring 5G services to two US cities this year but Verizon wants plans to take that a little further by announcing plans to bring the super-fast 5G to 11 American cities by mid-2017. Cities like Miami, Seattle, Washington DC, Atlanta, Dallas, and Denver among others will get the service.
But the service won’t be rolled out commercially just yet as only some customers will be getting this in those cities. 5G standardisation itself will be rolled out by June 2018 by the 3GPP and that’s when we expect to start seeing production of 5G compliant devices and say from 2020 the service should largely be available to the public but again this is based on availability in your area.
By rolling out the service to specific people, networks like Verizon will be able to carry out tests that will inform their decision when commercialising the service and this consistent will such roll outs. In software terms, you can this a beta phase for now.
Verizon is the biggest telecom company in the US by subscribers (143.9 million as at the third quarter of 2016).