Verizon CEO launches 5G in four US cities, will expand nationally
The CEO of telecommunications giant Verizon said the company’s launch Monday of the world’s first commercial 5G network in four U.S. cities signals a radical upgrade in the quality of American internet service.
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| VZ | VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC. | 44.34 | -0.04 | -0.09% |
Verizon turned on 5G service in Houston, Indianapolis, Sacramento, California, and Los Angeles, CEO Hans Vestberg said Monday on FOX Business' "Mornings With Maria."
5G is the fifth-generation wireless broadband service, offering speeds that are 10 to 100 times faster than existing LTE networks and lets users connect far more devices to their network that was previously possible.
Vestberg promised that the new service would be vastly superior to what customers have now.
"Whatever they have on their 4G today they’re going to have on 5G," he added. "It’s going to just be so much more throughput, and speeds in the network, so much faster, totally different.”
Vestberg also said 5G home customers will get YouTube TV free for the first three months and a free Apple TV 4K or Google Chromecast Ultra device at installation.
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Verizon, which has 153,000 employees and booked revenue last year of $126 billion, is not interested in creating its own linear, or traditional, TV content, said Vestberg, who said expansion of 5G across the U.S. would begin as soon as possible.
He added that the company would consider partnering with other companies to gain access to linear TV content.