Verizon on Track for 5G Launch Later This Year, CFO Says
Verizon’s push to 5G is “progressing as planned,” said Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis on a financial call Tuesday as the carrier unveiled Q1 results. “We are quickly approaching the initial launch of our residential broadband service later this…
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year, which will be the first use case of a broader 5G strategy,” Ellis said. “We are driving the ecosystem for future growth across the entire array of 5G services.” Verizon “successfully completed” its 11-city 5G pre-commercial trials and is moving to the commercial deployment phase “for the residential broadband launch in the second half of this year,” he said. “Earlier this month, we performed successful end-to-end 5G data sessions in these locations using commercial equipment that will be deployed [in] the launch later this year.” The carrier has said Sacramento will be one of the three to five cities where it will launch 5G later this year, and it will name other cities as launch gets closer, he said. Ellis said 5G service launch initially will use the carrier’s V5GTF standard, rather than the industry’s 5G standard released by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project late last year. “This gives us the opportunity to get a product out in the market before others,” he said. Ellis declined to say whether Verizon is likely to participate in upcoming FCC auctions of high-band spectrum. “We are very comfortable with the spectrum assets that we own as we move into the 5G world,” he said. “But at the right price, spectrum is interesting.” Operating revenue rose 6.6 percent from the year-ago quarter to $31.77 billion as profit rose 31 percent to $4.67 billion. The carrier had a net increase of 260,000 retail postpaid connections. "We began 2018 with strong momentum, and we expect it to continue throughout the year,” said CEO Lowell McAdam. “We are positioning Verizon for long-term growth while executing our strategy today and leading the way for the next cycle of growth for the industry.”