Verizon is the first U.S. carrier to publish its 5G radio specs

Verizon has said that it plans to be the first carrier in the U.S. to offer 5G service. After all, it did start the 4G LTE ball rolling in the states. Today, Big Red says that it has completed its 5G radio specs; these specs will be used by manufacturers of smartphones, suppliers of parts used to build out the 5G network, and others helping Verizon roll out and maintain 5G service. Data speeds for 5G are supposed to be approximately 100 times those of 4G LTE.

In February, Verizon partnered with Samsung on a 5G trial. And now that it has published its 5G specs, we could see the other major U.S. carriers look to catch up with Verizon. AT&T and T-Mobile are both working with Nokia on their 5G tests. Having learned from the experience of building its 4G LTE pipeline, Adam Koeppe, Verizon's vice president of network technology planning, says that collaboration among tech companies exceeds what was seen during the building of Verizon's 4G LTE network.

"The completion of the 5G radio specification is a key milestone toward the development of a complete 5G specification. The level of collaboration that we are seeing exceeds what we saw during 4G. This agile way of developing the specification and working with the ecosystem will enable us to get to market rapidly."-Adam Koeppe, vice president of network technology planning, Verizon

Companies working with Verizon on the 5G radio specs included Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, LG, Nokia, Qualcomm, and Samsung. Those specifications are based on Verizon's current trials, which means that they can be revised as we get closer to the actual launch of service. Most analysts expect that to take place in 2020.

source: PCMag