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Verizon delays in-home 5G rollout again due to the need for new equipment

Verizon delays in-home 5G rollout again due to the need for new equipment

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It’s still only available in five cities

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Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Verizon is delaying the rollout of its in-home 5G service once again. A Verizon executive told Light Reading that it is waiting for new and more powerful equipment that’s supposed to be released in the second half of this year before it expands the service.

Verizon’s 5G Home service has already had a choppy history. The company first launched 5G in four US cities in October 2018, which it claimed made it the first US carrier to roll out 5G. But that first version of 5G Home was only sort of 5G since it utilized Verizon’s own 5G technology called 5G TF instead of the more widely used 5G NR standard, which is used for both low-band and mmWave 5G services by every other mobile carrier (including Verizon’s mobile 5G network).

This isn’t the first time Verizon has delayed 5G Home

This isn’t the first time Verizon has delayed the rollout of 5G Home. Last January, Verizon said that 5G Home wouldn’t expand to other cities until sometime in the second half of 2019 because it was waiting for new equipment. Sound familiar?

In October 2019, Verizon ended up relaunching 5G Home in one new market, Chicago, and that iteration of 5G Home does use the 5G NR standard, at least. Otherwise, the service, more than a year after its official launch, is still only in five markets in the US.

The Verizon executive told Light Reading that it eventually wants 5G Home to cover approximately 30 million US households within the next five to seven years. So you might be waiting a while for the service to reach your neighborhood, if it ever does.