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The operator said it was still “on track” to achieve its goal of doubling its current coverage of 30 cities by the end of this year
For many operators, 5G deployments have been significantly impacted by coronavirus, which has led to significant working restrictions for staff at all levels.
For Verizon, however, the pandemic disruption has not slowed their 5G goals, with the company’s VP of technology, Heidi Hemmer, telling Mashable that they are still on track to launch 5G in the 30 new cities they promised last month.
"We’re on track for the additional 30 this year, and we continue to expand coverage in the 30 that we launched last year,” said Hemmer.
She noted that the typical marketing fanfare was a little quieter for the work going on, given the current climate surrounding the pandemic.
"There’s a calendar to launch more 5G cities over the next quarter, [but] we’re not doing marketing launches right now just because of everything that’s going on," she said.
Due to city-wide lockdowns and general worker health precautions, many operators are seeing their 5G deployments slowed, but Hemmer reports that the lack of the public on the streets has actually accelerated the deployment process in the cities where engineers are still allowed to carry out the work.
"In some cases, we have cities where the streets don’t have traffic on them and a couple of cities have given us wider construction hours,” she noted.
Now that the T-Mobile–Sprint merger is complete, Verizon cannot afford any delay in deploying its network. The new T-Mobile network, which will combine T-Mobile’s 600 MHz band with Sprint’s 2.5 GHz band, will potentially offer the fastest 5G speeds in the US.
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