Verizon has just found a new lane (opens in a new window) for its 5G highway: CBRS, a frequency very close to the C-band that, until now, the carrier has been using for 4G.
In March 2021, we tested Verizon’s 4G over CBRS, getting great speeds of up to 800Mbps. Combining that CBRS could well take those speeds to a gig with Verizon’s C-band, using 5G.
CBRS and C-band both qualify as “mid-band,” frequencies between 1GHz and about 7GHz where you can get a mile or more from a tower, but provide better speeds and capacity. There are wide enough channels available for 4G.
Verizon’s CBRS testing comes on the heels of T-Mobile’s 3-carrier-aggregation (3CA) 5G announcement, where T-Mobile is also looking to find new lanes of mid-band spectrum to stitch together for better performance. Used to be.
What Verizon and T-Mobile have in common is a common desire to sell wireless home Internet service, which uses a lot more data than phones. For that, you need a lot of potential, so they’re working hard to keep that together.
The advantage of CBRS over C-band is that it is available, at least to some extent, everywhere in the country. C-band is currently limited to forty-something “primary economic zones”, with the rest of the country being released for carrier use in 2024. CBRS has ridiculously complicated usage rules, but the end is that Verizon could use some of it almost everywhere.
Verizon will probably use carrier aggregation to let people play one channel of CBRS and one channel of C-band at the same time, where both are available.
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Verizon says it will roll out single base-station units with both CBRS and C-band, and activate each part when it allows.
The new capability will come “soon” to phones that support the “n48” frequency band for 5G, provided they get the right software updates. According to GSMArena (opens in a new window) these include the Apple iPhone 13 line, Google Pixel 6 line, OnePlus 9 and 10 Pro, Samsung Galaxy A13 5G and TCL 30 V 5G. Phonescoop says that the Samsung Galaxy S22 series also includes the n48 (opens in a new window).
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