Verizon launches its 5G Nationwide network, though users might not experience better performance than 4G, as Apple brings 5G to its new iPhones
VentureBeatJeremy Horwitz
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon has been building toward this for five years: it announced 5G testing with promised speeds 30-50x faster than 4G back in 2015 (its original testing roadmap) and framed early city trials as fixed broadband replacement in 2017. What actually shipped is different — an Opensignal study found Verizon had the fastest 5G among ten operators but that users saw 5G just 0.5% of the time (the Opensignal analysis).
Apple putting 5G radios in the new iPhones changes the equation by giving Verizon a mass-market device base on day one. But the competitive bar was set by AT&T, which committed to a nationwide sub-6GHz network in 2020 amid criticism of its '5G E' branding (AT&T's nationwide sub-6 push) — so this launch is as much about matching a rival's coverage claim as about speed.
First-order effects
New iPhone buyers on Verizon get 5G-capable hardware on a network whose own coverage footprint now matches AT&T's nationwide claim, even though PCMag's 26-city testing found 5G often failing to beat 4G (PCMag's carrier testing) — so most users will carry a 5G phone running at 4G-like speeds.
Second-order effects
AT&T faces pressure to defend its nationwide-first positioning, likely competing on coverage breadth and marketing rather than throughput, since independent testing shows its 5G can be slower than its own 4G.
Device makers and carriers now have aligned incentives to push upgrade cycles on the 5G label itself, decoupling upgrade demand from any measurable performance gain for typical users.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — widespread low-band 5G delivering 4G-like speeds, as The Verge's later state-of-5G review confirmed (the state-of-5G assessment) — carrier competition shifts from speed claims to coverage maps and bundling, while genuine high-speed 5G waits on mid-band and mmWave densification that only dense markets get first.
The trend: US carriers are racing to nationwide low-band 5G footprints that win the marketing race years before the network delivers meaningfully faster speeds.
So @verizon finally started talking about having 5G “nationwide” but they are using Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) to try and pull it off. Now... let me tell you what they don't want you to know about DSS... https://twitter.com/...
“US carriers were offering 5G on a part of the spectrum lacking in bandwidth capacity, meaning that avg 5G download speeds were just 52 megabytes per second ...By contrast, average 5G download speeds in the UK were 138 Mbps, nearly 6x faster than 4G and 4x faster than WiFi” @FT h…
Interesting points from @jsnell more transparency on the pricing would have been useful. On the time dedicated to Verizon, I wonder how much the format played a role in the decision https://twitter.com/...
There's something charmingly nostalgic about tech reporters live-tweeting an Apple event like we're in the Before Times. Feels like our version of the guys who put on tricorn hats and re-enact the Constitutional Convention.
Verizon is turning on its 5G nationwide network, which is its sub-6GHz 5G. It's not quite as fast as mmWave, but it will be much more widely available. 5G will be available in 1800 cities and towns.