Verizon becomes a serious threat to T-Mobile's 5G dominance in a matter of hours
Some Verizon customers say their 5G experience has improved drastically overnight and this is no coincidence.
Satellite communications provider SES has completed the second phase of a clearance scheme meant to free up a portion of C-band 5G for mobile operators ahead of the December 2023 deadline. Verizon had struck a deal with SES to fast-track the clearance of key mid-band spectrum for 5G services.
And now that SES has done its part, Verizon is wasting no time making its 5G network better. Some Verizon customers took to X, which was known as Twitter not too long ago, to reveal that they are getting more bandwidth and better speeds than before. They are reporting aggregate bandwidth reception of 100 MHz and 160 MHz and download speeds of up to one gigabit over 5G.
Verizon has C-band antennas all over the US and with new frequencies cleared for use, the bandwidth available to them has increased. Verizon is now steadily enabling the frequencies so more users should expect to see an improvement in bandwidth soon.
T-Mobile is currently the leader when it comes to 5G speeds and coverage but The Mobile Report thinks that now that Verizon can use more spectrum for 5G, it can pose a threat to that dominance.
C-band, as you may already know, is frequencies between 4 and 8GHz. It offers a better mix of performance and coverage and more bandwidth than other frequency bands. This leads to a higher capacity at higher speeds. AT&T and Verizon were the biggest bidders for the C-band spectrum, with the latter buying the largest number of C-band licenses.
T-Mobile was the third biggest bidder but the carrier won't be using the spectrum this year. The company doesn't need C-band as much as the other two carriers because its purchase of Sprint already got it a lot of 2.5 GHz mid-band spectrum in key markets across the US which it can now use for its 5G network.
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