Verizon Cries Uncle

Where I live, Verizon is the Gorilla Carrier, and has been flogging its '5G Network' to a faretheewell, mostly chest pumping its brand of mmWave as the wave of the future. Physics be damned, of course. While the other carriers flog their '5G' as having far, far more coverage. Which is simple to do, since their sub-6 run from (mostly) LTE towers (mostly same band).

Well, lookie here (today, and will disappear tonight)

Verizon announced that 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. This aggressive expansion has supported an increase in 5G Ultra Wideband data use of more than 750% year to date in advance of its C-Band spectrum commercial deployment, which will cover 100 million additional customers before the end of March 2022.

For context, here's another recent report (just a few months ago) on sub-6, which has been talked about here in the past.

C-band sits between the two Wi-Fi bands, which are at 2.4GHz and 5GHz. It's slightly above and very similar to the 2.6GHz band that Clearwire and then Sprint used for 4G starting in 2007, and which T-Mobile currently uses for mid-band 5G. And it sits immediately above CBRS, a band from 3.55-3.7GHz that's currently being deployed for 4G. So its transmission characteristics are very well known, and its safety is well established.

Note the circle diagram displaying the band-ishness of 5G. mmWave is about 5%.

And, not surprising, the report confirms the physics discussed here and many other organs for a long time

So by and large, AT&T and Verizon are delivering 5G that's either no faster than LTE would be on the same frequencies or has poor range.

So, how much better coverage?

Cell distance is a tricky thing. This paper from 2006 estimates that 3.5GHz networks can go up to 1.2 miles from each site in an urban area and up to 6.2 miles in a rural area. According to CellMapper.net, there are up to 2.5 miles between T-Mobile's 2.6GHz sites in suburban Dallas, but only 0.6 miles between sites where I live in Queens, New York. So I'm saying a half-mile for the 3.5GHz networks to be safe.

Big fucking deal. Pay for a full-blown 5G phone, and get to watch that foobawl game on your phone while you sit in the stands. Riiiiight!!! Who opined that there's a fool born every minute??

14,000 mmWave cell sites means squat.

So, what is the tower distance for LTE, sub-6, and mmWave? Let's see if we can find out.
LTE - low is 1-2 miles, best is 5-7 miles
sub-6 - Sub-6 GHz 5G networks are easier to deploy because they can use existing 4G infrastructures.
mmWave - approximately 500 meters from the tower