Verizon Names Its Next 5G City

Verizon added Houston to its list of 5G cities this morning. The Texas market joins Sacramento and Los Angeles as the first from Big Red to see the residential broadband internet.

Verizon says that they expect to launch the service in Houston in the second half of 2018, which we are already in. We wish they’d be more specific, but 5G is still very much a work-in-progress across the country from all wireless carriers. We do know that Los Angeles will go live in Q4, though, but that Sacramento still isn’t live even after having been announced as the first market.

As a reminder, Verizon’s first attempt at 5G will not be for your phone. Instead, Verizon 5G is home internet that’s basically beamed to an outdoor router, which is then distributed around your house via indoor 5G router. The system looks like this. It’s not wireless 5G that will power your phone as you hop around Sacramento, Los Angeles, or Houston. It could some day transition, somehow, into mobile 5G, but as you can imagine, there are skeptics.

Verizon 5G at your home is run over Millimeter Wave (mmW) spectrum, the type that will also be used in dense metro areas. It has poor reach and doesn’t work well when obstructed, but it is capable of producing ridiculous download speeds. As a home internet option, it might be pretty damn good.

// Verizon