Whether you're FaceTiming with a friend, streaming a television show or movie, uploading pictures or videos, or downloading music, reliable coverage and a fast network are crucial to ensuring a good experience. As Verizon builds out a 5G-powered tomorrow, and as more and more devices-from smartphones and tablets to home routers and IoT devices-come online, all that data is going to need more room to run.

That's why Verizon invested in millimeter wave spectrum for its 5G network-the first in the nation when it reaches residential broadband customers later this year. Millimeter wave technology is tailor-made for the bandwidth-hungry applications of tomorrow.

What is millimeter wave spectrum?

Think of millimeter wave spectrum as a superhighway. Now picture fleets of tractor trailers moving gigantic shipments of data in all directions on that roadway, at unrestricted speeds. 'But instead of these individual small lanes, imagine there are tens of thousands of gigantic lanes put together,' explains Ed Chan, Verizon's senior vice president and chief technology architect. 'That's how we're delivering 5G. That's why you see the massive difference in the ability to deliver this kind of bandwidth.'

4G LTE technology currently uses lower frequency spectrum, generally below 1 gigahertz (GHz), to deliver data at great speed. The velocities achieved over 4G LTE have dramatically changed the ways we communicate, consume media, manage our lives and even hail a ride. However, as technology evolves, so do our expectations for how we'll harness and use it. As society becomes increasingly digital-reliant, the demands created by tomorrow's even more data-intensive applications-whether virtual reality or real-time design programs-will require a fundamental reimagining of how data flows.

To that end, Verizon's 5G network will be based on higher frequencies-more specifically the 28 and 39GHz frequencies, known commonly as millimeter wave spectrum. These frequencies can carry massive amounts of data at very high speeds and with very little latency, or lag. That makes them ideal for accommodating a massive increase in data demands from mobile-first users, connected homes, AR/VR devices, cloud gaming systems, self-driving vehicles, IoT sensors and other cloud-connected devices. In the global race to 5G, Verizon's investment in millimeter wave technology can provide consumers and enterprises with more computing power than ever before.

How is Verizon investing in millimeter wave technology?

Verizon has been investing in millimeter wave spectrum for years, and owns significant swaths of the higher-frequency band. All that spectrum puts us in a strong position as we build out the nation's first 5G network. With lead researchers suggesting that mobile data traffic will rise at a clip of 53% each year for the foreseeable future, this higher-band spectrum will be essential to accommodating this uptick while still ensuring speeds up to (and even in excess of) one gigabit per second.

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Verizon Communications Inc. published this content on 21 June 2018 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 21 June 2018 08:12:01 UTC