Verizon Trials Dynamic Spectrum Sharing for 5G

Verizon has completed trials of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) technology in Texas and Minnesota. The trials, conducted in a live network environment, showed effective completion of data sessions with both LTE and 5G NR services running simultaneously over low band spectrum.

“The most recent successful trials of our DSS technology demonstrate we are on track to launch 5G Nationwide in 2020,” said Adam Koeppe, Senior Vice President of Technology Planning at Verizon. “DSS will allow us to run 5G technology on the same spectrum bands as LTE without inefficiently wasting spectrum resources. It will complement Verizon’s primary strategy of offering a keenly differentiated 5G Ultra Wideband service on mmWave spectrum which will remain our deployment priority.”

Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is a technology that allows 5G service to run simultaneously with 4G LTE on multiple spectrum bands, including those historically reserved for 4G LTE services. When commercially deployed in the near future, this new technology will allow Verizon to use its full portfolio of current spectrum resources to serve both 4G and 5G customers, maximizing their experience on the Verizon network by making 5G nationwide available.

The dynamic nature of how a network is used requires the ability to allocate spectrum resources in real-time providing customers the precise experience they need. With DSS, when customers move outside Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband coverage area, their 5G-enabled devices will remain on 5G technology using lower bands of spectrum.

The launch of DSS technology will unleash the power of 5G technology, allowing for robust computing at the edge of the network, and greater programmability of the network to manage dynamic traffic and uses. Customers will benefit from the extremely low latencies and the wide coverage of 5G with devices also capable of our Ultra Wideband experience.

“The inherent characteristics of 5G technology will lead to a wide variety of use cases that include everything from massive numbers of IoT devices that do very little networking, to smartphones with infinite opportunities to use data, to more complex solutions such as AR/VR that will require massive computing capabilities on the edge of the network. Those solutions will each require different combinations of the capabilities 5G will offer. To “right-size” network resources for these various use cases, it will require great flexibility and adaptability in the network,” said Koeppe. “DSS is an important stepping stone in achieving the flexibility and adaptability needed to accomplish such an aspirational level of programmability in our advanced Intelligent Edge Network.”