Verizon will discuss its best 5G for “premium” subscribers

If you have a basic Verizon plan, stick with the company’s weak nationwide 5G network – even after the critical C-band spectrum is available online. The company unveils in a submission to investors and confirms it The edge that C-band frequencies, and their faster speeds, are only available to customers on ‘premium’ unlimited plans. Those with a measurement or basic Start Unlimited plan will be transferred to slower low band 5G.

This is essentially how the company treats its ultra-fast mmWave 5G already: customers on the base level unlimited plan do not have access to this network, while Play More, More and Get More Unlimited subscribers do. Customers on custom plans also have no mmWave access, nor will they have C-band, but they can add access to both at an extra cost.

This is bad news for Verizon customers hoping that C-band will improve the poor performance on the company’s 5G. The network currently uses narrow low-band channels that are not suitable for 5G, and relies on a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing to accommodate 4G and 5G traffic on the same frequencies. As a result, Verizon’s 5G speeds are closer to 4G – and sometimes even slower.

Verizon was limited by the spectrum to which it had access, which is why it spent a lot of money on the recent FCC auction of mid-band frequencies, known as C-band. This amount of spectrum is ideal for 5G and offers faster speeds than LTE with a coverage wider than the limited mmWave. The company offered $ 45.4 billion on C-band licenses – more than double the amount AT & T spent. When these frequency blocks become available at the end of the year, they should significantly increase the network’s performance.

And that $ 45 billion is just the beginning. Verizon has revealed in its investor offering that it plans to spend another $ 10 billion on C-band deployment over the next three years, in addition to the expected capital expenditure. This is probably the reason why the company would very much like to have customers pull up to sharpen plans and that it uses the C-band spectrum as an incentive.

Verizon also says that all new phones it sells will be C-band compatible. This is already the case for flagships like the Galaxy S21 and iPhone 12 series, but not all budget or mid-range phones in the US are compatible with C-band. This is another thing that phone buyers should think about when buying a phone from Verizon, but it also simplifies the task of Verizon to address a more expensive plan for you. And if you have one of their basic plans, you may hear that the selling position is sooner rather than later.