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Say hello to the hotspot you'll use to connect to Verizon's 5G network
- Verizon announced that its first 5G hotspot will launch in 2019.
- The hotspot reportedly achieved 2Gbps of speed in recent tests.
- AT&T previously announced its own 5G hotspot.
According to The Verge, Verizon’s first 5G hotspot will be available sometime next year. Verizon developed the hotspot alongside Inseego Corp. but was mum on particulars like pricing and exact availability.
Inseego was more than happy to talk up the hotspot’s Snapdragon 855 chip and Snapdragon X50 5G modem, however. In a prepared statement, Inseego said the 5G hotspot “achieved more than 2Gbps of speed and sub-10 milliseconds of latency in multiple component carrier aggregation (CA) scenarios.” Inseego went so far as to say these results “mark a major milestone.”
We have to take those results with a grain of salt, however. Verizon previously said customers will see an in-home average download speed of 300Mbps and a maximum download speed of 940Mbps with no data caps. Verizon did not yet say what average speeds customers can expect on 5G mobile devices, though real-world speeds tend to be much slower than what carriers claim.
Elsewhere, Verizon’s 5G hotspot also supports the upcoming Wi-Fi 6. Announced in October, Wi-Fi 6 is used to identify devices that support 802.11ax technology and will start to become widespread next year.
AT&T already announced its own 5G hotspot, which also features the Snapdragon X50. AT&T also announced it will launch a Samsung-branded 5G smartphone in the first half of 2019. The smartphone could be the same one that will also launch on Verizon’s 5G network and could be the rumored highest-end Galaxy S10 variant.