At its quarterly earnings name earlier right now, Verizon introduced plans to increase its C-band 5G protection to extra rural and suburban areas by the top of this 12 months.
Whereas it is unclear which particular markets ought to count on to see a C-band improve, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg did observe that thus far, C-band 5G protection has been rolled out to 70 out of 406 accessible markets. That leaves 330 nonetheless ready, and a few of these will certainly get fortunate earlier than 2024 comes alongside.
Sadly, Vestberg didn’t make clear how lots of the 330 yet-unserved markets could be getting C-band protection this 12 months, however he did no less than affirm that almost all of the upcoming deployments will deal with suburban and rural areas.
Verizon spent $45.4 billion to amass C-band spectrum licenses at an FCC public sale in 2021, and it received between 140 and 200 MHz of spectrum throughout all 406 US markets. That is a hefty chunk of spectrum for positive, and the provider has been slowly however steadily rolling out entry to it ever since, but it surely’s undoubtedly not been a lightning quick deployment since many of the spectrum licensed was already in use and requires clearing earlier than reallocation.
When all is claimed and executed, Verizon will have the ability to serve greater than 250 million folks with C-band spectrum, which is certainly spectacular. The conclusion of the rollout would possibly nonetheless require ready till 2024 and past.
