What you need to know
- Verizon has delayed expanding its 5G Home service again.
- It expects to roll it out to more areas in the second half of 2020 with new high-powered equipment.
- The carrier hopes to have 30 million households covered with its 5G Home service in five to seven years.
If you were hoping for Verizon's 5G Home service to make its way to your area soon, you could be waiting longer than you expected. The news comes after a top executive at Verizon recently spoke with Light Reading and revealed the 5G Home service won't be expanding until the second half of 2020.
While that's a bummer for customers, the reason stems from Verizon waiting for new and improved equipment to be released later this year. So, even though you'll be waiting longer, at least the service should be better as a consolation.
Don't get your hopes up too high, though, as this is not the first time Verizon has delayed the rollout of its 5G Home service. Previously, it announced in January 2019 that expansion was delayed until the second half of that year. The reason for this delay, you guessed it, Verizon was waiting on new equipment.
Verizon initially launched its 5G Home service in four U.S. cities back in the fall of 2018. However, it used Verizon's own proprietary 5GTF transmission standard instead of the official 3GPP-approved 5G NR transmission standard. It would later relaunch the service in the last half of 2019 in Chicago using 5G NR equipment that customers could self-install.
In the second half of 2020, Verizon expects to launch new, more powerful customer premises equipment (CPE) that will be key to Verizon's 5G Home expansion. The new CPE equipment is capable of receiving signals from much further away, which should allow a wider coverage area and for more customers to use the service.
This should help put Verizon on track to hitting its 30 million household goal. However, according to Verizon's Ronan Dunne, it could take the carrier up to five-seven years to reach this goal.
