Verizon’s First Commercial 5G Deployment to Arrive This Year, with Samsung Tech

Samsung will provide Verizon with 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), the companies have announced.

The companies have already experimented with 5G technologies in trials in seven US cities last year across California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington D.C. The trials produced laudable results including sending 5G radio signals to the 19th floor of a building and establishing broadband connection in ling of sight, partial line of sight, and non-line of sight conditions.

Moving ahead, the plan is to launch commercial 5G services in Sacramento starting in the second half of this year. Samsung will provide 5G Radio Access Units, 5G home routers, and 5G radio frequency planning services, and will develop ASIC-based 5G modems and mmWave RFICs for the effort.

In a statement announcing the plans, Verizon SVP Ed Chan suggested that Silicon Valley will provide a strong foundation for the expansion of Verizon’s 5G services, asserting, “Sacramento is an ideal place to begin deploying 5G broadband services, providing a progressive environment for creating future use cases.”

News of the companies’ new efforts comes soon after Samsung’s 5G technology was used in a field trial with Japanese telecom KDDI that saw 8K video transmitted to a fast-moving train.