It is no secret that among the Big Four wireless carriers in the United States, Verizon Wireless seems to be the most eager to deploy its 5G service. As a matter of fact, as early as September of last year, the Big Red had already revealed its plans to start testing its 5G network in 2016, and if all goes well, roll out the service next year. Some are seeing this as a hasty move, considering that by next year, there is no telling if industry standards will have already been developed for 5G technology.
Braxton Carter, the chief financial officer of T-Mobile, certainly agrees with this, and the top executive has even offered an explanation for Verizon Wireless’ eagerness to deploy its 5G service. As posited by Carter during a recent investor conference, it is possible that the Big Red could not handle its data traffic as efficiently as before.
Like Verizon Wireless, a couple of other major US wireless carriers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, are also already commencing tests for their respective 5G services. But it appears that the Big Red is going at it on a dead sprint. Carter believes that this could have unpleasant consequences for the industry leader in the long term.
Carter further pointed out that when T-Mobile revealed its plans for its 5G service, it was with the expectation that standards for this particular technology will still be set in the next few years, and realistically speaking, it would be until 2019 or 2020 before any form of the mobile tech (that would conform to the standards still to be set) will be made commercially available to mobile users. But what Verizon is doing may be costly because it runs the risk of changing how it delivers its 5G service midway by the time the standards will be implemented across the industry half a decade from now. Carter likened the transition of 5G to that of 3G several years back when most wireless carriers adopted GSM, while a few went for CDMA.
So why is Verizon doing it anyway? Carter thinks that it may have something to do with huge increases of data in its network, spurred by massive consumption of video content. The Big Red may have been left with no other choice but to explore 5G anyway, so as to help alleviate the gargantuan volume of data traffic it has to handle on a daily basis.
