Cities join Chicago and Minneapolis as first group of 30-plus markets tagged by Verizon for mobile 5G rollouts in 2019.

Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor

June 27, 2019

3 Min Read
Verizon Lights Up Mobile 5G in Denver, Providence

Verizon said it is launching mobile 5G service in Denver and Providence, R.I., adding two markets to the 30-plus cities that the carrier has tagged for deployment throughout 2019.

Verizon's mobile millimeter wave 5G service is launching in Denver today, and set to go live in Providence on July 1. Those launches follow Verizon's earlier ones in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Verizon said the 5G network being lit up in Denver and Providence will deliver typical download speeds of 450 Mbit/s, with peak speeds above 1.5 Gbit/s. Customers can also expect latency of less than 30 milliseconds, the company said.

Those launches will reach only a portion of those markets early on, and will initially be supported by four 5G-based devices -- the LG V50 ThinQ 5G, the Motorola z3 and z4 combined with the 5G moto mod, and the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.

Figure 1: Mile High City Speed Test Verizon claims it is seeing speeds of more than 2 Gbit/s on its 5G network in Denver. Image source: Verizon. Verizon claims it is seeing speeds of more than 2 Gbit/s on its 5G network in Denver.
Image source: Verizon.

In Denver, initial mobile 5G coverage will be concentrated in the Highlands area (South of 37th, between Tejon and Navajo Streets), as well as throughout Denver's popular LoDo area, which includes Coors Field, home to the Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies. Coverage will also include areas around venues such as the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Sculpture Park and outside the Paramount Theater, as well as Capitol Hill and the northern parts of the Denver Tech Center.

In Providence, mobile 5G coverage is initially set for parts of College Hill, Federal Hill, Mt. Hope, and landmarks such as Brown University (Erickson Athletic Complex, Wriston Quadrangle), Rhode Island School of Design and Providence College.

Why this matters
The launches are a step forward in Verizon's plan to deploy mobile 5G in more than 30 cities this year, and complements some of the operator's 5G-based fixed wireless broadband service offered in select markets. They also give Verizon some bragging rights in the 5G deployment race against rivals AT&T and T-Mobile.

Other mobile 5G markets on tap for Verizon in 2019 include: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Memphis, Phoenix, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Washington, DC.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Jeff Baumgartner

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.

Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers.

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