The first commercial 5G mobile network in the United States is here! Verizon, a US telecom operator, enters the market

U.S. telecom operator Verizon announced on Wednesday (April 3) that it will deploy the "5G Ultra Wideband Network" in the urban core areas of Chicago and Minneapolis starting today, a week ahead of schedule.

The statement said that Verizon customers in the two cities will be "the first people in the world to connect 5G smartphones to the 5G network," and the 5G Ultra Wideband network is the world's first commercial 5G mobile service that can be used with 5G smartphones.

Last October, Verizon launched its first commercial 5G broadband service, "Verizon 5G Home", in four cities in the United States, focusing on speeding up home Internet to replace traditional wired home broadband connections. At that time, Verizon claimed to be the first operator in the United States to launch commercial 5G services, but also admitted that since home 5G hardware equipment is not an official 5G standard, the so-called "5G" is 5G that meets the company's standards, not a "formal 5G" product with global and industry-wide unified standards.

Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg reiterated in a statement that the company announced in February that it would launch 5G services in at least 30 cities in the United States in 2019. In a subsequent interview with financial media CNBC, he said that more 5G-compatible hardware will be launched, but it is unlikely to see a positive revenue impact from customers using 5G-compatible devices before 2021.

After the news was released, Verizon's stock price stopped falling and turned to rise, with an intraday increase of 0.9%, breaking through $59 at one point, but close to the low in five days.

The company's statement revealed that the most typical download speed for 5G customers in Chicago and Minneapolis is 450 Mbps, with a peak speed of nearly 1 Gbps and a latency of less than 30 milliseconds. According to the analysis, 1 Gbps is 10 times the common speed of existing 4G LTE, which means that a movie can be downloaded in a few seconds, which is faster than the minutes of 4G LTE network.

The two cities' downtowns and landmarks will all be able to experience the "5G Ultra Wideband Service," and Verizon customers who travel to Minneapolis to watch the NCAA Final Four this weekend can "get it first." However, currently only the Motorola Moto Z3, a phone paired with the 5G Moto Mod back cover, can access Verizon's 5G network.

Last year, Lenovo's Motorola launched the Moto Z3, the first 4G smartphone, which can be connected to the 5G network with the accessory 5G Moto Mod (5G module back cover). According to the Chinese version of Engadget, the Moto Z3 is an exclusive customized product of Verizon, and the Moto Mod can support 5G connection capabilities. Motorola's official website said that this means that smartphones will usher in a real revolution:

“No need for any settings or connections, just snap on the Moto mods and your phone will be transformed into anything you want with a click.”

Today, Verizon also announced that the Moto mod, an accessory for the Motorola Moto Z3 smartphone, is now available for sale. The pre-tax price is $199, and the Moto Z3 phone is priced at $480, with a specific discount that can reduce the price by $240. Customers who use Verizon's various high-volume mobile data packages can spend an extra $10 per month to get the highest-volume 5G data package, with 5G data free for the first three months.

Verizon also said that it will regularly improve the high speed, low latency and overall network performance of 5G Ultra Wideband, and will continue to upgrade the 5G network with many technology partners. Customers' devices can receive regular software updates, and the 5G network will be improved this year.

In addition, Samsung expects to launch the 5G version of Galaxy S10 in the second quarter of this year. It will initially be sold through Verizon's channels and will be able to access Verizon's commercial 5G mobile network. By the end of this year, the sales channels will be expanded to major US telecom operators such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Verizon not only launched commercial 5G mobile network services a week ahead of schedule, but also took the lead in the competition. T-Mobile, the third largest telecom operator in the United States, and Sprint, the fourth largest telecom operator in the United States under Japan's SoftBank Group, both plan to launch 5G services later in 2019. The two companies also plan to merge, and the user scale may exceed AT&T, forming a three-way split in the future US telecom market.

According to analysis by the US media Fortune, Verizon's launch of its 5G mobile network one week in advance surprised many industry insiders and officially escalated the competition for the leadership of 5G wireless network services between the top two giants in the US telecommunications industry: Verizon and AT&T.

In December 2018, AT&T launched the 5G network "5G E" in 12 markets in the United States. The name is explained as "5G Evolution". The signal corner label of mobile phones using this service has also switched from 4G LTE to 5GE. However, smartphones under this network still run at 4G speeds and are not connected to the actual 5G network. Competitor Sprint even sued AT&T, the second largest telecommunications operator in the United States, in February this year for allegedly using false 5G labels to mislead consumers.

At that time, Verizon and T-Mobile's business executives ridiculed AT&T for launching a "fake 5G commercial mobile network" first. T-Mobile executives even said that by simply changing the subscript of AT&T, their mobile network could be upgraded to 9G immediately. However, the battle for the emerging 5G market is still in full swing in the United States and China across the Pacific.

Wall Street Journal once mentioned that currently, major mobile operators around the world have begun to make a major sprint in 5G deployment. Verizon is expected to invest $17-18 billion this year, most of which will be used to build 5G networks. AT&T plans to deploy 5G in 21 US cities by the end of this year. Domestically, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom will all start 5G trial commercial use this year. It is expected that by 2020, first-tier cities and some second- and third-tier cities will be covered by 5G signals.

In order to match the launch of 5G mobile networks, smartphones compatible with 5G performance will also be launched one after another. Like the transformation of telecommunications companies, 5G commercial mobile networks will bring new opportunities and challenges to smartphone brands. Apple, which won the battle for large-screen smartphones ten years ago, may have a "bad start" in the new 5G era.

According to Taiwan's Electronic Times on April 2, Apple intended to purchase 5G baseband chips from Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics, but was rejected by both. This year, Huawei, ZTE, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers are expected to launch 5G mobile phones, and Apple has not yet found a solution for 5G technology, which also means that Apple may miss the first wave of the 5G war. According to Bloomberg, Apple's 5G mobile phone will not be seen until 2020 at the earliest.