Can the Fastest 5G Hold Up to Holiday Shopping?

Millimeter-wave 5G can be considered the ultimate 5G. With lanes as wide as a Texas superhighway, mmWave is the only 5G technology that delivers the multi-gigabit speeds we heard about in early promises of 5G—that is, if you can find it. More importantly, though, mmWave has capacity. This is the technology to go with when massive crowds drag other networks down to a crawl. Holiday shopping in Manhattan, for instance, would be a great example of this.

But finding mmWave is the problem. Millimeter-wave panels tend to have a mere 800-foot range in our testing, which means it's hard to build out coverage over large areas. Verizon says it has dozens of cities with mmWave. T-Mobile has eight. AT&T says it focuses on “hotspots” like sports stadiums and, most recently, airports, where large crowds gather that can overwhelm other kinds of networks.

Verizon introduced mmWave in New York City more than two years ago. The carrier recently shifted its mmWave strategy to sync up with the others, saying it's best for the most congested, intense locations, and that its new C-band 5G (coming in January) will help to handle the rest.

With the help of some new software, I decided to put that assertion to the test. Manhattan over the pre-Christmas period is usually a tourist nightmare. I remember walking with a stroller near Rockefeller Center once and actually being forced into the street by the crowds. 2021 isn't quite as crowded as it was before the pandemic, but if mmWave is gonna make it anywhere, it's gonna make it here.

You'd think a major train station would be a prime spot for mmWave, but you'd be wrong
(Photo: Sascha Segan)

I went to five dense, crowded locations:

• Times Square, the Crossroads of the World, chock-full of tourists and the scam artists who love them

• Rockefeller Center, home of the famous tree and skating rink

• Bryant Park, Manhattan's largest and most famous holiday market

• Union Square, adjacent to several university campuses and home to another holiday market

• Moynihan Station, America's busiest Amtrak station

I tested using WIND, a new acquisition from our parent company Ziff Davis' Ookla division. WIND lets me construct more complex tests and collect far more detailed network information than I could in the past, including finding out what frequency band a phone is actually using at any given time. WIND isn't available to consumers, but businesses can buy it to manage their mobile network strategies.

Pop-up holiday markets like this one in Union Square have shoppers and merchants alike using the mobile networks, rather than landline internet
(Photo: Sascha Segan)

Why Carriers Need mmWave

Both AT&T and Verizon are clearly struggling under the weight of even limited 2021 holiday traffic. While both carriers had their “nationwide” 5G at our test locations, they were distinctly slower than T-Mobile's “ultra capacity” mid-band 5G, which in turn was slower than millimeter-wave.

The big difference between T-Mobile's mid-band 5G UC and mmWave, of course, is that T-Mobile's system is everywhere, and mmWave is almost nowhere. In Moynihan Station, for instance, where you'd think AT&T and Verizon would want mmWave to handle the rushing crowds, only T-Mobile had wide channels of dedicated 5G spectrum.

Just Millimeters Worth

Millimeter-wave didn't have a great showing in this test. The problem isn't performance; when I hit mmWave panels as I left the Bryant Park holiday market, my Verizon speeds jumped from 20-30Mbps to 650-720Mbps. Amazing! That's a network that can handle thousands of shoppers all Instagramming their purchases and FaceTiming Aunt Glenda about whether the socks at this market stall are right for Uncle George.

But it's also a network that may be unbuildable. In my five locations I saw:

• mmWave within the core of Times Square, but not on the fringes

• No mmWave at Rockefeller Center, although some in the nearby Fifth Avenue shopping district

• No mmWave within the Bryant Park holiday market, although some on the surrounding blocks

• Spotty and inconsistent mmWave around Union Square

• No mmWave in Moynihan Station

T-Mobile showed brief spots of mmWave within Times Square, and AT&T appeared to have one panel east of Union Square.

The hotspot strategy for mmWave relies on landlords in some of the nation's densest, most valuable locations agreeing to put up 5G panels, with fiber backhaul and the associated disruption. And more than two years after Verizon first launched its millimeter-wave adventure, that still seems to be an unachieved dream. While Verizon (and the other carriers) can get some mmWave into these busy zones, the coverage doesn't even knit together to cover a whole park or market.

All of this emphasizes that C-band can't come soon enough. Verizon and AT&T have both publicly said they anticipate launching C-band on January 5. Verizon has said it will cover 100 million Americans with C-band by the end of the first quarter of 2022. AT&T expects to cover 70-75 million by the end of 2021. We look forward to testing it.