C-Band Gives Verizon 'Real 5G'

pcmag.com:

Verizon's new C-band 5G network has significantly improved the carrier's 5G speeds and is bringing Verizon's performance closer to T-Mobile's, according to a new study from Opensignal.

"Verizon users’ mid-band 5G download speeds were approximately four times faster than the average 5G download speeds we were used to seeing in Opensignal’s previous reports," the research firm says.

Looking at only mid-band speeds, Verizon now appears to be quite competitive on average against T-Mobile, which is especially impressive as Verizon is using less spectrum than T-Mobile is—60MHz to T-Mobile's 80-100MHz.

Overall nationwide results show that Verizon has a long way to go in terms of getting C-band coverage and C-band-compatible devices out there, though. While Verizon's overall nationwide 5G speeds have gotten a bump since the C-band launch, they lag far behind T-Mobile's because most of Verizon's 5G test results are on its "nationwide" 5G network. That network performs almost exactly like 4G.

Both Verizon and T-Mobile have said they are aggressively expanding mid-band 5G this year. Verizon says it will cover 175 million Americans by the end of the year, and T-Mobile says it will cover 260 million. All current "5G" phones on T-Mobile support mid-band; we have a list of the Verizon phones that support C-band.

AT&T is still behind in the 5G race, although that's by design. Opensignal finds that AT&T's C-band speeds, while more than twice as fast as its "nationwide" 5G speeds, are behind the other two carriers. AT&T's coverage in Chicago is too limited to test, it says. We tried testing AT&T C-band in Chicago and could only find one cell site.

AT&T is combining its 40MHz of C-band with an additional 40MHz of 3.45GHz spectrum, but the