Bloomberg:
Verizon Communications Inc. announced deals making Apple Inc. and Google its first video providers for a superfast 5G wireless service the company plans to launch in four cities later this year.
And:
With the introduction, Verizon will provide 5G customers either a free Apple TV box or free subscription to Google’s YouTube TV app for live television service, according to people familiar with the plan.
This partnership is a big, legitimizing win for Apple TV. But I’m still not sold on 5G.
5G has limitations. It requires major infrastructure, expensive network hardware to propagate the signal, meaning it will be prohibitively expensive to be able to serve rural areas, is ideally suited for dense urban areas.
Also:
High-frequency 5G radio signals are easily disrupted by rain and foliage and remain commercially unproven. But if successful, the technology could lead to as much as $200 billion a year in industry-wide development spending.
I have high hopes that some form of high speed wireless will eventually replace wired service, make broadband more widely available and, most importantly, bring competition to the marketplace, give consumers more choices.
As I remember, they also accepted federal tax breaks on the promise of extending broadband coverage, too.
Keep hoping for more competition, Dave. The trend is going the other way.
“5G has limitations. It requires major infrastructure, expensive network hardware to propagate the signal, meaning it will be prohibitively expensive to be able to serve rural areas, is ideally suited for dense urban areas.”
Verizon, and the other big telecoms are not in the least interested in poor urban areas, and have no intention or inclination to roll out high speed broadband in low population density areas. They are only interested in the dense urban areas where there is a affluent audience to buy the services. I live in a Semi-rural county in the eastern Panhandle of WV. While only two hours from the DC/Baltimore area, other than satellite half of my county has NO wired broadband from ONE provider, and sketchy cellular.
Verizon utterly abandoned it’s plans to extend it’s well regarded FIOS network as a competitor to Comcast and Cablevison, but they were punished in the Stock Market for spending money on infrastructure.
There’s no such thing as competition in American capitalism. Educate yourself. Quit listening to the Trump sheep who tell us that free market solve everything, while initiating tariffs and trade protection for their capitalist crony friends.