The first consumer 5G products came to the market in 2019 with promises of broadband replacement levels of speed and low latency. Still in its infancy, most 5G-enabled phones are still quite expensive. In the US, wireless carriers have been notably behind the rest of the world when looking at average 5G network speeds.
One exception has been Verizon, who has focused their 5G deployment entirely on the high-band technology, mmWave. Due to the usage of high-band frequencies, mmWave could bring multi-gigabit per second speeds to the masses, but very low range and difficulty penetrating buildings have been challenging setbacks. Qualcomm’s recent announcement could be just what the industry needed.
