Verizon's ultrafast 5G home internet service will begin rolling out October 1 and offer download speeds 10 times as fast as the US average

warp speed

Verizon will be the first internet service provider to offer a 5G home internet service.
The service, called Verizon 5G Home, will offer customers higher speeds than most are used to.
It'll be available only in four cities to begin with.

Verizon announced on Tuesday evening that it would begin selling the first 5G home internet service starting Thursday at 8 a.m. ET, with the service rolling out to four cities beginning October 1.

5G is the evolution of the wireless 4G LTE technology that most of us use on our smartphones. The major difference with 5G is that it's much faster and can be applied outside of mobile uses.

In Verizon's case, wireless 5G technology is replacing the typical wired home broadband internet service. 5G wireless internet data will be delivered to homes by "small cells" — essentially mini cell towers — as opposed to the current wired infrastructure.

Verizon said customers of the new service, Verizon 5G Home, "should expect typical network speeds around 300 Mbps and, depending on location, peak speeds of nearly 1 Gbps, with no data caps." In short, Verizon 5G Home customers should typically expect extremely fast internet speeds.

One Gbps translates to 1,000 Mbps, which would let you download a 1 GB file in eight seconds, which is incredibly fast. Even the 300 Mbps speeds that customers should typically expect is fast, allowing customers to download a 1 GB file in 28 seconds.

To compare, the average home internet speeds in the US as of May measured in at 92.93 Mbps, according to PCMag. Those speeds would let you download a 1 GB file in 1 minute, 32 seconds.

At the national average of 92.93 Mbps, internet speeds in the US can handle any kind of streaming, even 4K video streaming, without any issues. But Verizon's 5G Home service that offers even higher speeds paves the way for more data-intensive use cases in the future.

Logistics and initial limitations

Verizon's 5G Home service will be free for the first three months, after which the service will cost $50 a month for existing Verizon customers and $70 a month for non-Verizon customers.

Customers from any city can sign up for the Verizon 5G Home service on Thursday, but the service will go live on October 1 in only four cities to begin with: Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, California.

For customers outside those four initial cities, signing up for Verizon's 5G home internet service will grant them early access to Verizon's 5G Home when it becomes available.

Verizon said it would offer free installation of routers and router upgrades that would support its 5G Home service.

As part of the 5G Home deal, you'll get YouTube's TV service free for the first three months, after which it'll cost users $40 a month. Customers will also get a free Apple TV 4K or Google Chromecast Ultra.

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