Verizon discusses performance and sales of its 5G home service
For the past one month, Verizon has been involved in the sales of its 5G Home service and recently, the operator and some other experts have offered some insights into the performance of the product, both from a business standpoint and a technical standpoint. According to the Wall Street Analysts at the Deutsche Bank, half of the clients who have purchased the 5G Home service were not previous customers of Verizon. This is an important statistic as it shows that Verizon’s fixed wireless and in-home service appeals to both the existing customers and new customers of Verizon.
The 5G Home service, which is available in some areas of four cities, provides internet service to stationary receivers in homes and offices using 28GHz spectrum. Verizon has positioned this offering as an excellent alternative to wired internet services offered by operators like Comcast and Charter. The 5G Home services offered by Verizon come with speeds of about 300 Mbps at a rate of $50 USD per month to its current mobile subscribers and $70 USD per month to non-mobile phone subscribers.
It seems that the 5G Home strategy may be the next big thing to expand the mobile customer base of the carrier and perhaps based on the offers of discounts to internet customers that subscribe to its mobile phone service. Interestingly, Charter and Comcast have almost a similar strategy which bundle mobile and fixed services. However, each of their mobile offerings, Spectrum Mobile and Xfinity Mobile, runs on the network of Verizon under an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) model, meaning they dont need to yet build their own full scale nationwide network.
Based on the report from the analysts from Deutsche Bank, the installation time for the Verizon 5G Home services for new customer has dropped to about 25% since the month of October when the service was first launched. The analysts also mentioned that the time it takes the installation technician to find an excellent signal location in a home has been reduced by half.
It is essential to mention that the 5G Home service has to be installed by a certified technician from Verizon. This is because the installation process requires a receiver outside or on the inside of the customer’s home. Verizon had mentioned sometimes ago about introducing a self installation model which allows customer to install their receiver by themselves, however, the carrier has reiterated its plan to continue using its technician to carry out the installation to ensure a seamless and good experience of the customers with the product.
During an investor’s conference earlier in November, 2018, Matt Ellis, the CFO of Verizon, elaborated on the issue of the installation process. He emphasized the need of the operator to install the device in order to avoid customers having a bad experience at some points in their product usage. He mentioned that their service doesn’t end at the point of installation; rather they keep in touch with the customers to get feedback and to make sure they have seamless experience. According to him, there have been good feedback from customers in terms of the considerable increase in speed of the 5G Home service as opposed to the broadband experience from other third parties.
Verizon has announced its intention to expand its 5G Home service to about 30 million households in the US within a couple of years.
Gilbert A Darrell is the Founder of Horizon Communications. He has 18 years experience in information technology and telecom solutions, a veteran in Fire and EMS Services, A member of the Bermuda Fire Service Advisory Board, a crypto enthusiast and a member of the Bermuda Government’s Cryptocurrency Task Force.
Horizon Communications is an upcoming fixed wireless internet and cellular service provider looking to provide services in Bermuda, the Caribbean, and Central America before expanding internationally, utilizing 4th generation and soon 5th generation wireless technology.
