Verizon Can't Stop Over-hyping 5G; This Time In NFL Stadiums
from the unrealistic-expectations dept
We've noted for a while that 5G is being aggressively over-hyped. While it's an important evolutionary step in wireless connectivity, it's far from the revolution hardware vendors and cellular carriers are promising. Verizon, for example, insists that 5G is the "fourth industrial revolution" that will almost miraculously spur the smart cities and smarter cars of tomorrow. While 5G is important (in that faster, more resilient networks are always important), the idea that 5G will fundamentally transform the world tends to overshoot the mark.
Carriers haven't quite learned yet that over-hyping the standard only serves to associate it with disappointment in the minds of consumers. Verizon, for example, has crowed widely about the company's early 5G launches, but when reporters and users actually try to use these networks, they routinely find they're barely available. Lately, Verizon's marketing department has been heavily hyping the company's launch of 5G in around 13 NFL stadiums, once again insisting this is going to be a paradigm shift that changes the woooooooorld:
"Today’s announcement is a key moment in our partnership with the NFL. We’re proud to work with such an iconic organization to bring Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband service to fans across the country. Verizon 5G is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and play, and we expect the impact on the sports entertainment industry to be massive - it promises to revolutionize the entire game-day experience for fans."
But once again, reporters who dug just beneath the service again found that the launch was nowhere as impressive as what the company has promised:
"Verizon isn't promising any 5G coverage outside the seating areas, and the seating-area coverage will only be available in some sections. When contacted by Ars, Verizon said that its 5G coverage "varies by stadium" but provided no specifics on how widespread the coverage is in each facility. At least some of the 13 stadiums don't have any 5G coverage available outside the seating areas, Verizon also acknowledged."
Part of the problem is Verizon is leaning heavily on millimeter-wave signals to fuel most of its 5G deployments, but such signals don't travel very far and are easily blocked by walls, weather, and other obstacles. The other problem: there are few if any phones that actually support the standard yet, since the industry has yet to really hammer out the battery issues caused by the higher power consumption (one of several reasons Apple isn't expected to launch a 5G iphone until the second half of 2020, if not later).
In other words, most of the hype you've seen about 5G is talking about networks that are barely available, and have little to no widespread device support. Wireless carriers are eager to over-hype 5G for two reasons: it allows them to justify sky high prices for mobile data (US consumers pay some of the highest prices in the world for 4G, something that's only getting worse with 5G), and it will eventually help spur the sales of significantly more mobile handsets, a metric that has stalled out in recent years as smartphone innovation has plateaued.
Superficially, those seem like sensible reasons for wireless carriers to hype a new network standard that will genuinely bring about some important (albeit not really revolutionary) improvements. But by associating 5G with failed promises in the minds of consumers, companies like Verizon are actually sending the message to most of those users that it's not actually going to be worth their time to make the switch, defeating the entire point of the marketing hype.
