Verizon 5G Wireless Tech Enters Field Testing In 2016, Commercial Deployments In 2017

Verizon is truly working its magic behind the scenes to increase connection speeds for customers. Around this time last month, the company announced that it is testing a 10 gigabit optical fiber internet service that will offer 10Gbps download/2Gbps upload speeds and could eventually offer peak download speeds of 80Gbps. Today we’re learning that Verizon is also working on boosting its wireless speeds by testing out 5G wireless technology.

So what exactly does 5G wireless technology entail? Verizon is being pretty coy at this point, as field tests aren’t expected to start until 2016. However, the company does say that 5G provides 50 times the throughput of its existing 4G LTE network and that latency has been reduced to “single milliseconds.” Verizon also says that 5G technology will allow it to handle “exponentially more” devices that are expected to come online via the exploding Internet of Things (IoT) movement.

“We feel a tremendous sense of urgency to push forward on 5G and mobilize the ecosystem by collaborating with industry leaders and developers to usher in a new generation of innovation,” said Verizon Chief Information and Technology Architect Roger Gurnani.

Verizon plans to test its 5G tech in two “sandbox” environments; the first will be Waltham, Massachusetts, while the second will be in San Francisco, California. Verizon will also be working with an all-star team of technology partners including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung.

“When you’re planning a technological evolution at this scale it must be a collaboration of players in the ecosystem,” said Alcatel-Lucent CTO Marcus Weldon. “Collectively we are bringing to bear an incredible amount of resources and intellectual capital to introduce the next generation of wireless technology,” added Gurnani.

While many industry analysts have forecast that 5G networks would open for business in the United States around 2020, Verizon is expecting limited commercial availability sometime in 2017. Needless to say, we’re existing for the wireless future!