My Experience of VZW 5g

[CellGeek]

I have been a Verizon customer for about 10 years and am on a starter unlimited plan with 55+ discount. I pay $87 per month for two unlimited lines. Several months ago, I upgraded from an iPhone X to an iPhone 14 Pro Max so now I have 5g. My experience after traveling throughout California and the USA is that I have better signal with 5g vs the LTE on my old iPhone X. On the other hand, performance is about the same with 5g as compared to LTE on my iPhone X. Therefore my experience with 5g is slightly better than LTE. I never get more than 70mbps down and 70mbps up. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting under a VZW tower at 3 am, I am throttled down because of the plan that I am on. Friends with the same phone at the same location get more the 500mbps regularly. I realize that I am throttled into the ground by my cheap starter plan! I have thought about upgrading, but why? 30mbps on a cell phone is adequate for just about anything unless you want to tether a laptop. Why spend the money? It is like having a Bugatti sports car that will go 250mph, but really is that speed practical?

[DRC72]

70Mbps would be plenty for my needs. Anything else would be gravy. Honestly, if you’re not having any trouble streaming, checking, email, surfing the web, etc then there’s no reason for you to upgrade to the more expensive plans. But if you’re looking for a hotspot data, then you might want to upgrade your plan. It’s all about what you need.

[Serial Port]

I have the same plan with two phones on Verizon as well. It does include mobile hotspot at no additional charge. I rarely use the feature.

[kaZZoo]

Wow, the best you get is 70mbps on post paid.

On Prepaid i get 130, in my house on a wooded lot, on nation wide.
In town, il see 200-300 all the time.

Might want to look into T-Mobile, you can try the network pass for 3 months.

Their 55+ is 70.00 for 2 lines, tax included.

[rpz1]

The highest I've seen is 15mbps on a prepaid Verizon Mifi 8800l in a more rural area. Averages 5mbps and I use my laptop or a desk top no problem except certain times of day (like late afternoons and evenings when everyone comes home from school and work) when it drops to kbps because of depriority and Verizon's negligence on capacity. Even 5 is good for reliable streaming.

Of course allot more is good if you're work from home and do allot of online multitasking, downloading uploading etc., or feel you need to download every movie or have multiple devices at the same time.

[kaZZoo]

Wow, the best you get is 70mbps on post paid.

On Prepaid i get 130, in my house on a wooded lot, on nation wide.
In town, il see 200-300 all the time.

Might want to look into T-Mobile, you can try the network pass for 3 months.

Their 55+ is 70.00 for 2 lines, tax included.

Forgot to mention, same phone as the OP

[rpz1]

Forgot to mention, same phone as the OP

Location, location, location.

[kaZZoo]

Location, location, location.

Yea i know, they did mention through out California and around the USA.

[Melli Mel]

Wow, the best you get is 70mbps on post paid.

On Prepaid i get 130, in my house on a wooded lot, on nation wide.
In town, il see 200-300 all the time.

Might want to look into T-Mobile, you can try the network pass for 3 months.

Their 55+ is 70.00 for 2 lines, tax included.

Exactly I get around 200 on Metro in Chicago during rush hour.

Sent from my DE2118 using Tapatalk

[bobdevnul]

...I have thought about upgrading, but why? 30mbps on a cell phone is adequate for just about anything unless you want to tether a laptop. Why spend the money? It is like having a Bugatti sports car that will go 250mph, but really is that speed practical?

I have been saying this for years. 99.9% of the cellphone using population has no idea of what speed they are getting. If I get 5Mbps I can do everything I want to do - basic use like, email, web browsing, forums, audio and video streaming, navigation, etc.

Video conferencing and large uploads/downloads do not work well at 5Mbps. I don't need to do those things while mobile on a cellphone. Some other people do.

I'm not saying that 5Mbps should be the goal of the cell networks. More speed available means that more people can get usable speed more of the time. That is a good thing.

My needs for cell service are pretty minimal. Tracfone service costs me about $5 a month for all I need. I did use Visible for a while. It was a nice feeling to have unlimited everything available, but not really worth the $30 a month cost to me.

I just ignore the cult of the speed testers. That's their hobby, not mine.

[rpz1]

I'm not saying that 5Mbps should be the goal of the cell networks. More speed available means that more people can get usable speed more of the time. That is a good thing.

This is the point many people don't get. The primary purpose of speed availed by new network tech is for increased capacity and consistency for an increasing number of users. That speed allowing personal activities to complete quicker is just a current benefit of that primary purpose. Face it, if the capacity is ever stretched again, people seeing 200 mbps now will be seeing 20.

The problem I see is that the networks don't do anything to increase the capacity in areas that can't benefit from the limited range of the new tech like c-band. That would mean more tower infrastructure.

[blkballoon925]

You're 100% correct. This is one of the common misconceptions I've heard about mmWave, especially. And I blame the marketing that tried to make it about speed tests instead of about providing adequate capacity for everybody in every venue. Its primary purpose isn't to deliver 4 Gbps to one device. It is intended to provide gigabits of aggregate capacity to thousands of devices in a confined location where a lot of demand exists, such as stadiums and arenas, so that everybody might have 20 or 40 Mbps of throughput instead of struggling to move any data at all. But yes, it also happens that when demand is low, it can provide hundreds of megabits or gigabits of throughput to one device.

Your point regarding mid-band also stands. Adding C-band to existing sites spaced for AWS/PCS distance and penetration is only going to help outdoors and next to existing cell sites. All of the providers need to improve cell density to make mid-band most effective. That's where I give credit to Verizon, who has been the most aggressive of the major US carriers to deploy small cells outside of major urban centers and stadiums with sub-6 small cells and plenty of mmWave within suburban neighborhoods and even some fairly rural areas. Verizon certainly has its constrained and obsolete areas overdue for upgrade, just as every carrier does. But in terms of density and small cell count, AT&T and T-Mobile will need years to catch up to where Verizon is today. AT&T, especially, is going to need to invest heavily in small cells and new macros to establish the kind of density needed to make their 3.4+ GHz C-band holdings effective.

[VVivian]

This is the point many people don't get. The primary purpose of speed availed by new network tech is for increased capacity and consistency for an increasing number of users. That speed allowing personal activities to complete quicker is just a current benefit of that primary purpose. Face it, if the capacity is ever stretched again, people seeing 200 mbps now will be seeing 20.

The problem I see is that the networks don't do anything to increase the capacity in areas that can't benefit from the limited range of the new tech like c-band. That would mean more tower infrastructure.

You definitely already know this, but: That's why the primary purpose of higher frequencies is offloading. That way, people only covered by lowband don't have to share it with any more people than absolutely necessary.

I've seen Band 13 LTE speed up a lot in my market since C-Band launched!

Your point regarding mid-band also stands. Adding C-band to existing sites spaced for AWS/PCS distance and penetration is only going to help outdoors and next to existing cell sites. All of the providers need to improve cell density to make mid-band most effective.

Incorrect. 64T64R massive MIMO C-Band has longer range than AWS/PCS. Source: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/huaw...ed-5g-networks

[rpz1]

You definitely already know this, but: That's why the primary purpose of higher frequencies is offloading. That way, people only covered by lowband don't have to share it with any more people than absolutely necessary.

I've seen Band 13 LTE speed up a lot in my market since C-Band launched!

Yes thanks, that's been mentioned before. But how can an area served by a cell tower that doesn't have c-band, off load to see an increase on the low bands in that area ? Are you saying c-band off load in a city 20 miles away I'm going to see a difference in capacity on my non c-band tower 5 miles away ?

[VVivian]

Because the people within range of C-Band are using C-Band for their data traffic instead of using lowband. The fewer people using a channel, the faster it is. A layer cake approach keeps lowband speedy by reserving it for only people who are out of range of midband and mmWave.