A little over a year ago I detailed my experience as a new Verizon 5G Home FWA customer. To recap, Verizon deployed its 5G mmWave towers throughout my Denver neighborhood and I jumped at the opportunity to get the service. I knew I’d be a good candidate because there’s a small tower just 250 feet from my back porch.
Initially I was logging speeds of 1.7 Gbps downstream and 25 Mbps upstream when I was close to the router that is installed in a window at the rear of my house. In my home office in the other corner of my home I was hitting speeds of 350 Mbps downstream and 14 Mbps upstream.
After testing Verizon’s service for a couple weeks, I happily cut the cord with my cable provider and exclusively used Verizon’s 5G Home service for my web surfing, Zoom calls and streaming video.
One year later and I’m still a Verizon 5G Home customer. Other than the occasional slower-than-normal speeds (that usually occur early in the morning and don’t last for very long), the glitches and delays are rare. My upload and download speeds are still fast — I typically log speeds between 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps downstream and 25 Mbps upstream speeds close to the router and speeds of around 150 Mbps to 200 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps upstream in my home office.
As a Verizon FWA customer, I was excited to learn a few weeks ago that Verizon is introducing a new receiver that might boost those upload speeds and can be installed outdoors, freeing up my laundry room window where the current indoor router is mounted.
At Mobile World Congress Las Vegas in late September, Verizon Consumer Group COO Krista Bourne told attendees that Verizon will soon ship this new receiver that is 60% smaller and lighter than the previous version.
A Verizon spokesperson told me that outdoor installation of this new receiver can improve the service because it’s easier to find a signal and it also improves signal loss which can occur with building materials and Low-E glass. Low-E glass is typically installed in homes and buildings to make windows more energy efficient.
Plus, she said that the new receiver incorporates the latest Qualcomm chipset technology. When Qualcomm announced its next-gen 5G FWA technology earlier this year, the company said that it uses advanced spectrum aggregation and dual connectivity capabilities to aggregate bandwidth for downlink and uplink, which is why it can deliver better upload speeds.The new receiver also contains multiple antennas and can switch between Verizon’s different 5G spectrum bands like C-band and mmWave and also will run on its 4G LTE network.
The Verizon spokeswoman said that the receiver will start shipping to customers in select cities in the next few weeks with a national launch planned for early 2023. No word on when the new receiver will come to Denver or if I’ll qualify to receive it. But I look forward to hearing more about its potential to boost my upload speeds.
Verizon’s FWA service is a good news story for the company, which has struggled the past couple of quarters due to weakness in its postpaid phone net adds. In the second quarter the company added 168,000 FWA net adds in its consumer segment and 88,000 FWA net adds in the business segment.
Verizon reports its 3Q earnings this Friday and I’ll be interested in learning how many more customers have joined me on 5G Home bandwagon.