With 5G network, a large number of Verizon customers in the US are experiencing speeds of 1.7 Gbps which enables a video download in less than 60 seconds as against ten minutes with a 4G network. It is ahead of its competitors in 5G rollout in the US but what many do not know is that there is an Indian team behind this success. Verizon’s India team has played a critical role in making this possible.

“Every 5G experience has essentially originated and built out of Indian operations. Without India, we would not have had our 5G experiences. It is an integrated capability set working closely with US centres,” said Ronan Dunne, Executive Vice-President and Group CEO, Verizon Consumer Group. Verizon India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Verizon Communications Inc supporting Verizon’s wireless and wireline businesses in the US and its global enterprise solutions business.

First mover

Four years ago, when the 5G ecosystem development was slow, Verizon convened the 5G technology forum and brought on board Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia. “We developed a pre-standard version of 5G. Verizon has been in the vanguard of 5G agenda not only in the US but also globally,” he told BusinessLine .

“We are looking globally for opportunities to partner and innovate around 5G ecosystem. We have the explicit objective of being a global leader in 5G not because we are going to build network in other markets but want to accelerate the entire 5G global ecosystem,” he said.

Verizon launched 5G network in October 2018 in four markets in the US around Samsung equipment offering residential broadband 5G services. “We are seeing consistent high quality throughput of 5G service delivered at 99.5 per cent of all of the data — only falling back 0.5 per cent to the 4G network. There is a high levels of customer satisfaction with an average download speed of 650 Mbps. Customers using more data on a wireless broadband connection,” he said.

“We launched first 5G mobility a few hours before Korea. On the first day, the network speed was around 600-650 Mbps and the same network is delivering at 1.7 Gbps speed in real user experience. We are seeing rapid downloads of video moving from ten minutes to 60 seconds,” he said. And, a great part of the Verizon’s 5G success could be attributed to its India team, which Dunne said was involved in design experience to code, software development and delivery of products around 5G technology. “We now have an integrated approach, and our view is if we can further augment the capability set that we have in India. We have nearly 4,500 people here,” he said.

Trade war

The impact of US-China trade war on 5G adoption depends on how different countries respond to Huawei or Chinese manufacturers, generally. There may be a short term slowdown in the 5G deployment. There is really no deployment in China. “I don’t think the US-China trade war is slowing down the global 5G adoption. There may be a shortage of supply for a period of time,” he said.

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