Verizon customers in Cheyenne began to notice in the past few weeks that their Verizon 5G service wasn't working. Dozens of people said they've noticed intermittent service, while others said they had no problems at all.
Karen Schulz, global network and technology communications with Verizon, told Cowboy State Daily that the company is continuing to build and optimize its next generation 5G Ultra Wideband network.
"We realize that while these updates will bring a myriad of positive benefits to our customers in the long run, some customers are experiencing temporary growing pains," Schulz said.
Sporadic Service
The 5G service is the fifth generation mobile network. It's a step up from 4G, and it provides decreased latency, which is the time delay in network communication.
Because that delay is less with 5G, the download speeds tend to be faster.
Cheyenne resident Devin Mazzone was among those on the Cheyenne Community Connections Facebook group asking if anyone else had experienced problems receiving 5G service through Verizon.
Mazzone told Cowboy State Daily that he noticed about a week ago that his phone stopped showing it had a 5G signal, which he said has reduced his mobile bandwidth.
"The download speeds seem much slower. And anything not downloaded to my phone, like music or videos, works sporadically," Mazzone said.
Others have commented in the group that they had the same problem, while some said they haven't experienced any problems.
Conflicting Answers
Rhianna Herrera, another Cheyenne resident, told Cowboy State Daily she began losing the service about three weeks ago. She tried contacting Verizon to figure out why the service wasn't working on her phone.
"They say they do not have any outages and we should be getting it. They created a support ticket for me," Herrera said.
As with Mazzone, Herrera said her bandwidth was reduced. She said she went out of town for spring break and was able to get connected to 5G without any problems.
Mazzone said he tried contacting Verizon support and got conflicting answers to his questions.
"First, they told me there had been some upgrade or maintenance done on towers and that even though my phone showed 4G, I was getting 5G," Mazzone said. "Then they told me they would send someone out to fix the towers and it would be fixed in a couple of days."
Mazzone said he went to Denver for St. Patrick's Day and had 5G Ultra service there.
Upgrades And Improvements
Schulz said that Verizon is in the midst of the largest network upgrade in the company's history. In recent months, she said, the company has turned on five new macro cell towers and an indoor distributed antenna system, which is a network providing wireless service within a building.
As a result of these additions and other optimization efforts, Schulz said, throughput has increased 31% over the past year and dropped calls reduced by 25%.
Schulz said the network will continue to receive upgrades in the coming months, which will allow customers in Cheyenne to do things on their phones that previously could only be done when connected to their home internet service.
"This includes everything from downloading huge documents and streaming movies in HD audio and video, to playing console quality games and conducting video chats, video conferencing and FaceTime calls with clear sound and video," Schulz said.
