Verizon has revealed new details about its rollout of super-fast 5G mobile service and has started taking preorders for its first true 5G phone, the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.
Verizon on Thursday named 20 cities that will get 5G this year on top of the two, Chicago and Minneapolis, where the service has been available since earlier this month. The new cities include Atlanta, Boston, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. (See full list below).
Another eight cities that still have yet to be announced will also get 5G in 2019, Verizon said without detailing when it would reveal the next group.
But there are some limits to the new service, which can reach download speeds up to 50 times faster than current 4G LTE networks. It will only be available in some parts of each city and it only works with two phones.
One is the currently available Motorola Moto Z3 with a $200 5G add-on pack. The other is the upcoming Samsung phone that is now available for preorder starting at $1,300 and will reach customers on May 16. Verizon (VZ) typically charges customers with unlimited data plans an extra $10 monthly to use 5G, but said it would waive the extra fee for a limited time.
The carrier is racing against rivals AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint to woo customers with the next generation of wireless technology. A high-definition movie file that may take a few minutes to download on the fastest 4G networks would arrive in seconds over 5G.
AT&T (T) has already named almost 20 cities where its mobile 5G service will be available this year, including Atlanta, Dallas, and New Orleans. Sprint (S) has said it plans to offer 5G in May starting in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City. Meanwhile, T-Mobile (TMUS) has plans for 30 cities but hasn’t revealed many details yet (though it has promised not to charge more than 4G service).
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson this week said that 5G mobile pricing is likely to evolve over the next two to three years away from just a single premium charge. Eventually, he expects customers will be charged different prices for different 5G maximum speeds, similar to the current pricing tiers for home Internet service.
Cities Getting Verizon 5G
These are the cities that Verizon says will get its 5G service sometime later this year: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Memphis, Phoenix, Providence, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Washington D.C.