Verizon continues to upgrade Washington DC’s network

Verizon has recently made major upgrades to the network serving customers in Washington DC. These upgrades are part of a multi-year redesign of its network architecture to stay ahead of exponential data usage increases, upgrade the technology in the network, and to pave the way for personalized customer experiences. Network upgrades in Washington DC include deploying new cell sites to extend coverage and capacity in local communities. They also include adding more capacity on fiber optic cables to move more data through the network and adding bandwidth to the cellular network to accommodate new services like wireless internet service for homes and businesses. Specifics on the upgrades include:

• Engineers have deployed 5G Ultra Wideband service using Millimeter Wave (mmWave), its premium, high-band spectrum which allows for extremely fast speeds and massive capacity as well as C-band spectrum designed for fast speeds, high capacity and wide coverage. With the recent deployments and upgrades, 75% of people in Washington DC now have access to 5G service from Verizon. Verizon Engineers have deployed 5G Ultra Wideband service using its C-band spectrum designed for high capacity and wide coverage and its premium mmWave spectrum. Most notably, Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband service has been deployed across the District of Columbia and communities around the DC beltway including parts of the National Mall, Arlington National Cemetery, Old Town Alexandria, and major shopping destinations along the Georgetown Waterfront and Tyson’s Corner. Additionally 5G now covers Chevy Chase, Dupont Circle, Farragut Square, Scott Circle, RFK Stadium, DC General Health Campus, Cleveland Park, Pentagon City, Crystal City, and Potomac Yards.
• These deployments used Verizon’s recently acquired C-band spectrum, designed to provide wide coverage for 5G service. Throughout Washington DC, Verizon engineers are using 100 MHz of C-band spectrum to deliver 5G service to customers. By the end of the year, customers in Washington DC will be able to take advantage of significantly more spectrum as it becomes available for 5G Ultra Wideband. That additional bandwidth will turbo charge the service, offering significantly higher speeds, much greater capacity to accommodate more customers and more robust services
• Even as engineers provide wireless service in more places, they are also enhancing the service by deploying leading edge, modernized technology in the area. Engineers have upgraded the hardware in many of the cell sites providing service throughout Washington adding capacity for more data to be used by customers, providing power efficiency, and providing virtualization. This technology milestone allows Verizon to rapidly respond to customers’ varied latency and computing needs, and provides greater flexibility and agility in the introduction of new products and services. The move to a cloud-based, virtualized architecture with standardized interfaces in every part of the network leads to greater flexibility, faster delivery of services, greater scalability, and improved cost efficiency in networks.
• Lastly, the addition of 5G service and the many additional wireless solutions allow far more data to travel on the wireless network in Washington DC. That exponential increase in data carried into and out of the cell sites serving the community requires upgraded fiber optic cable links. Fiber optic cables are used to move data between cell sites and connect those sites to the rest of the network. Verizon has increased the capacity on the fiber connections in many cell sites in the Washington DC area so they can carry 10 times the amount of data.

“Our network engineers work tirelessly to ensure we can provide the most reliable connections across Washington DC. We will continue to unlock the power of 5G for our customers with better connectivity for their phones, homes and businesses, as part of our ongoing commitment to this community,” said Kevin Smith, Vice President of Network Engineering and Operations for Verizon.

With these and other technology advancements on Verizon’s network, customers are able to use more data in more ways. This multi-service network powers

• Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices that do very little networking and stay in place,
• smartphones with infinite opportunities to use data in a highly mobile environment,
• home and business internet which provides connectivity via the wireless network for homes, offices and retail environments, and
• complex solutions like Augmented Reality or enterprise real-time video and data analysis that require massive computing capabilities.

As 5G technology advances and is even more widely adopted by consumers the variety of solutions that will use Verizon’s network will continue to evolve as well.

Washington DC customers have an outstanding experience on Verizon’s network
The recent network upgrades have led to customers and visitors to Washington DC having an outstanding experience when using the Verizon network, according to the nation’s most rigorous scientific testing company RootMetrics®. In the most recent test measuring performance of major wireless carriers throughout Washington DC, Verizon was unbeaten for overall network performance. Today’s results show great speeds for Verizon customers in Washington DC with Verizon’s median download speed increasing 76% and average upload speeds increasing 18% in the market since last year*.

CT Bureau