Verizon will reserve its best 5G for “premium” plan subscribers

If you’re on a basic Verizon plan, you’ll be stuck with the poor performance of the company’s “national” 5G network – even after the critical spectrum of the C band is online. The company revealed in a presentation to investors and confirmed to the The Verge that the frequencies of the C band, and their faster speeds, will only be available to customers on unlimited “premium” plans. Those with a metered or basic Start Unlimited plan will be relegated to a slower, lower-band 5G.

This is essentially how the company already handles its ultra-fast mmWave 5G: customers on the basic entry-level unlimited plan do not have access to this network, whereas Play More, Do More and Get More Unlimited subscribers do. Customers with measured plans also do not have mmWave access and also do not have C bandwidth, although they can add access to both for an additional fee.

This is bad news for Verizon customers who expect the C band to improve the poor performance they are seeing on the company’s national 5G. The network currently uses narrow, low-band channels not suitable for 5G and has a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing to accommodate 4G and 5G traffic on the same frequencies. As a result, Verizon’s 5G speeds are closer to 4G – and sometimes even slower.

Verizon was limited by the spectrum to which it has access, so it spent a lot on the recent FCC auction of mid-band frequencies known as the C-band. This piece of spectrum is ideal for 5G, offering faster speeds than LTE with coverage that is wider than limited range mmWave. The company offered $ 45.4 billion in C band licenses – more than double what AT&T spent. When these frequency blocks start to become available at the end of the year, this should significantly boost the performance of the network.

And that $ 45 billion is just the beginning. Verizon revealed in its presentation to investors that it plans to spend an additional $ 10 billion over the next three years in deploying Band C, above and beyond its expected capital expenditures. This is probably why the company is extremely interested in directing customers to “intensive” plans and is using the C band spectrum as an incentive.

Verizon also says that from now on, all new phones it sells will be compatible with the C band. This is already the case for flagships like the Galaxy S21 and the iPhone 12 series, but not all low-cost or high-end phones. medium-sized are compatible with band C in the United States. This is one less thing for phone buyers to think about when buying a phone with Verizon, but it also makes Verizon’s job to convince you of a more expensive plan as well. And if you’re on one of your basic plans, you can hear that sales pitch sooner or later.