Verizon wants to offer unlimited 5G Home Broadband to compete against Comcast and fight Cable Companies

[AlTech]

Verizon wants to offer unlimited 5G Home Broadband powered by the same technologies your phone uses for LTE Data. The big caveat being this involves 5G and not LTE.

 

They want to offer this to compete against Comcast's existing Home Broadband solutions.

 

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Verizon's launch of 5G home Internet targeted four cities dominated by either Comcast or Charter, and Verizon says it will continue to bring the service to densely populated areas dominated by cable companies.

The launch cities that got Verizon 5G home Internet this week were Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento. Comcast is the main cable provider in Houston, Indianapolis, and Sacramento, while Charter leads the way in Los Angeles and covers part of Indianapolis, according to ISP tracker BroadbandNow.

 

 

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That's no coincidence. Verizon Chief Technology Architect Ed Chan told Ars that Verizon is focusing on using the $70-per-month wireless home Internet service to compete against dominant cable companies.

Verizon is targeting cities "where cable is today, just foundationally, because we definitely see the customer demand in those places," Chan said.

Cable companies have generally avoided competing against each other, so many US cities have just one provider. When there are two cable providers in a city, they often divide the city up into non-overlapping territories.

The cable industry has "done a very good job of always aligning to a single cable-only provider" in each area, Chan said. "Those customers are very eager to get a choice in their broadband provider."

Besides cable providers, the four launch cities all have AT&T wireline service. It's mostly AT&T DSL or fiber-to-the-node, with some fiber-to-the-home.

 

One thing to note is that we have no idea how successful this has been so far.

 

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Verizon says that its 5G home Internet service provides download speeds of 300Mbps to nearly 1Gbps with very low latency and has no data caps or throttling. The fixed 5G service uses a router in the home and, in some cases, also requires an exterior antenna on the home.

Verizon provided no word on where else it will bring the wireless home Internet service. Even in the four launch cities, it's only available in certain areas, and Chan would not say how many households it is available to today. You can check availability by address here.

"We're keeping that close to our vest in this particular case," Chan said.

You wouldn't expect such secrecy if the number was impressive, because Verizon has never been shy about touting the number of people its 4G network can reach.

 

Some mobile networks in some countries are currently offering LTE broadband in homes but this user thinks the data caps often associated with them are limiting the viability of it for widespread public adoption.

 

I think this could be a cool idea for areas which can't currently get good broadband. However, that is only if there are no data caps or at least reasonable data caps at lower prices than what Verizon was offering and provided there is no throttling.

 

$70/month for unlimited data seems okay but what about those who are fine with 500GB Data per month or 200GB Data per month or just 100GB Data per month? Additional tiers and price points would need to be created to segment the market and provide value for customers with varying purchasing power.

 

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/hate-your-comcast-broadband-verizon-might-sell-you-5g-home-internet/

 

[jasonvp]

Verizon says that its 5G home Internet service provides download speeds of 300Mbps to nearly 1Gbps with very low latency

 

I'd love to see what their definition of "very low latency" is.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, jasonvp said:

 

 

 

I'd love to see what their definition of "very low latency" is.

The article shows a quote of the Verizon engineer stating that the latency would be around 3-5ms one way. So around 10ms one way and back.

[AlTech]

Just now, CUDAcores89 said:

Good. At least this is competiton working as expected.

 

Hopefully this will roll out to as many places as possible.

Yup. But rn this is only just 4 Cities and a small number of customers within the 4 Cities.

 

Verizon is anticipating that future cities may prove more difficult because of local legislators and state governments.

[Alex Atkin UK]

As I understand it 5G cell density is going to need to be close to, if not MORE than Cable or DSL cabinet density.  So this should be perfectly doable.  Although how exactly they are going to avoid crosstalk with such a high cell density I'm not sure.

[Hugh_Mungus]

The roll out is in a very small area I live in one of the test cities and It is unavailable to a lot of people

[captain_to_fire]

44 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

 

 

 

I'd love to see what their definition of "very low latency" is.

As per IEEE specifications, 5G will have significantly more bandwidth by using millimeter waves and lower latency than LTE/LTE-A. https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/wireless/everything-you-need-to-know-about-5g

Sub 1GHz spectrum (like 700 MHz) may have the advantage of wider coverage and better building penetration, but it is easily congested. 

[Inelastic]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I think this could be a cool idea for areas which can't currently get good broadband. However, that is only if there are no data caps or at least reasonable data caps at lower prices than what Verizon was offering and provided there is no throttling.

 

$70/month for unlimited data seems okay but what about those who are fine with 500GB Data per month or 200GB Data per month or just 100GB Data per month? Additional tiers and price points would need to be created to segment the market and provide value for customers with varying purchasing power.

 

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/hate-your-comcast-broadband-verizon-might-sell-you-5g-home-internet/

 

No throttling or caps currently. I'm sure they'll start adding them once the service is established and they have a sizable customer base on it.

[jasonvp]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

The article shows a quote of the Verizon engineer stating that the latency would be around 3-5ms one way. So around 10ms one way and back.

I wouldn't call 10ms "very low", but it's a far shot better than existing LTE, for sure.  I can run speedtests at my place of residence with 3-4ms response time.  I call that "very low".

[Syntaxvgm]

4 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

I wouldn't call 10ms "very low", but it's a far shot better than existing LTE, for sure.  I can run speedtests at my place of residence with 3-4ms response time.  I call that "very low".

if that's the actual latency of the end product, then I'd say that's doable for gaming and stuff. Beats the hell out of satellite internet, which is literally unusable for games and some services, I wonder if this will be a rural thing in the future? 

[jasonvp]

Just now, Syntaxvgm said:

if that's the actual latency of the end product, then I'd say that's doable for gaming and stuff. Beats the hell out of satellite internet. 

I 100% agree with that.  Again: it's quite a bit better than today's cellular/LTE tech for sure.  Easy to game with/on.

[mynameisjuan]

3 hours ago, jasonvp said:

I'd love to see what their definition of "very low latency" is.

We have wireless fiber points that rivals actual fiber latency. 5G works much different that 4G and other standards. 

[mynameisjuan]

54 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

I wouldn't call 10ms "very low", but it's a far shot better than existing LTE, for sure.  I can run speedtests at my place of residence with 3-4ms response time.  I call that "very low".

How is that not low? 

 

Do people realize how little that matters in most use cases. Fiber is low 4-8, air fiber is similar, cable is 40-50 along with DSL and satellite isnt worth mentioning.  

 

As long as its not copper its all good.

[jasonvp]

1 hour ago, mynameisjuan said:

How is that not low? 

I didn't say it wasn't low.  Specifically they described it as "very low".  I don't consider 10ms very low.

 

This is "very low"

 

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Do people realize how little that matters in most use cases.

 

I game a lot; fast FPS twitch-style gaming.  Every little ms of network latency does matter.  I'm also a network architect with over 25 years of industry experience.  I understand latency, what it means, what it affects, etc.

 

[Mooshi]

Why are we showing wired speed when Verizon gives new unlimited customers around 0.6mbps according to their own community forum?

[Sakkura]

"Unlimited" while they're literally throttling firefighters in the middle of wildfires because their "unlimited" plan also comes with, you know, limits.

 

And now they're running ads about how important it is to have communications in emergency situations, and how Verizon is the most used network for emergency services. Sorry, that doesn't get you off the hook for deliberately, maliciously throttling firefighters and potentially putting lives at risk.

 

Edit - Here is their shameless, despicable ad:

Spoiler

 

 

[schwellmo92]

Wouldn’t it make more sense to use 4G LTE to provide internet to homes? It has greater coverage and can still hit the speeds that Verizon are advertising for 5G.

[schwellmo92]

2 hours ago, jasonvp said:

I didn't say it wasn't low.  Specifically they described it as "very low".  I don't consider 10ms very low.

 

This is "very low"

 

I game a lot; fast FPS twitch-style gaming.  Every little ms of network latency does matter.  I'm also a network architect with over 25 years of industry experience.  I understand latency, what it means, what it affects, etc.

 

10ms latency (added latency over cable) is still definitely low enough to game on. I currently use 4G LTE for playing Overwatch (which is 20ms latency over cable) and it is still extremely playable. You don’t notice 10-20ms.

 

Anyways I thought 5G latency was under 5ms?

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

$70/month for unlimited data seems okay but what about those who are fine with 500GB Data per month or 200GB Data per month or just 100GB Data per month? Additional tiers and price points would need to be created to segment the market and provide value for customers with varying purchasing power.

 

We pay $64 to Comcast for 150/10 service with 1TB cap. Honestly Verizon might have something here. The fact is cord trimming is becoming bigger here in the US. In my household we use 700-900 GB in a month, on top of having OTA antennas. So data caps not really friendly. I think they dont have a fucking point to be honest. 

 

Where 5G really could compete is Rural areas. The issue is, they are going to deploy it in the cities and most likely leave rural areas unupgraded. Rural areas dont have cable, generally they rely on crappy DSL or Satellite service. Maybe decent 4G LTE service if your lucky. 

[Brooksie359]

19 hours ago, jasonvp said:

I didn't say it wasn't low.  Specifically they described it as "very low".  I don't consider 10ms very low.

 

This is "very low"

 

I game a lot; fast FPS twitch-style gaming.  Every little ms of network latency does matter.  I'm also a network architect with over 25 years of industry experience.  I understand latency, what it means, what it affects, etc.

 

There is latency in many diffrent areas when gaming. You can minimize the latency in one area but that doesn't reduce the latency of other components in gaming. At some point you start to reach a limit at which point reduction isn't all that valuable. I would say the difference between 3mn and 10 is very small if you consider all other types of latency in the chain. It's not going to increace your performance by any significant amount. Also 10ms us very low latency when you consider the average latency that people have. Most people would kill for 10ms internet tbh. 

[poochyena]

4 hours ago, jasonvp said:

I wouldn't call 10ms "very low", but it's a far shot better than existing LTE, for sure.  I can run speedtests at my place of residence with 3-4ms response time.  I call that "very low".

The average person's reaction speed is around 250ms, but you are going to tell me that there is a big noticable difference between 4 and 10 ms? It absolutely is not noticeable at all.
https://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/

[sof006]

This is all well and good (and a cool idea) but how reliable is the 5G tech? Will it become saturated, is there likely to be drop outs more frequently Vs standard broadband. List of questions could continue but those are the important ones. Saturated network towers usually result in an overall slower connection.

[mynameisjuan]

17 hours ago, jasonvp said:

I didn't say it wasn't low.  Specifically they described it as "very low".  I don't consider 10ms very low.

 

This is "very low"

Very low depends. 10ms and under is very low to me as too many factors come into play with true latency.

 

17 hours ago, jasonvp said:

I game a lot; fast FPS twitch-style gaming.  Every little ms of network latency does matter.  I'm also a network architect with over 25 years of industry experience.  I understand latency, what it means, what it affects, etc.

I am a network engineer as well and know that latency matters in certain situations. Jitter matters more IMO and if you are an engineer you will know that too. 

 

Anything under 60ms is pretty much unnoticeable and VOIP can be usable up to 150ms before the delay goes to shit. 

 

Also these test are test to servers and unless its on network then the latency result is moot for your actual latency. All I am saying is this is for residential and to 99% of people, this IS very low latency.  

[EarthWormJM2]

...I think a lot of people on here need to read up on latency and what it actually means. I have provided 2 links below. I mean, just about any online game shows your latency, or "ping" as COD used to call it, and it is usually way high (granted this screenshot was taken a couple years ago). So 10ms of latency is nothing (and yes I know it will also depend on the latency of the server you are connecting to to send a response as well, so we won't be seeing 10ms on screens like this yet)

 

I've even set up a complete wireless network in a warehouse for a company that needed wireless scanning devices to have wifi coverage in almost every inch of the facility. The devices were using a software that needed an always active connection to work as it is constantly accessing a live database, and even that would work just fine up to about 80-90ms before they'd get disconnected. (which is transferring way more data then it takes to game)

 

Either way this is what I always thought internet would become as speeds and coverage got better, I just hope it takes off for widespread use and stays reasonably priced so I no longer have to deal with illogical cable packages that are, for example ($60 for 100mbps or for $10 more you can get 150mbps with our HD fancy basic but not really basic channel package, can I get just 150mbps? Of course,That will be $80...)

 

Also, (based on the title) Verizon IS a cable company as well, they are just as bad as Comcast. They just have the wireless infrastructure already from their cell service in place which makes this move a no-brainer.

 

https://www.sas.co.uk/blog/what-is-network-latency-how-do-you-use-a-latency-calculator-to-calculate-throughput

https://hpbn.co/wifi/

[leadeater]

On 10/8/2018 at 9:32 AM, AluminiumTech said:

$70/month for unlimited data seems okay but what about those who are fine with 500GB Data per month or 200GB Data per month or just 100GB Data per month?

For 500GB or even 200GB the price shouldn't change, caps are 99.9% of the time a sham and do nothing. 100GB might be enough to have a lower price but not much. Data usage doesn't cost money, bandwidth does, and you can use a hell of a lot of data with relatively low bandwidth.