Verizon's 7 GHz 6G Field Test Exposes Building-Penetration Gap

Verizon has completed a pre-standards 6G test call using 400 megahertz of spectrum in the 7 GHz band, but CTO Yago Tenorio says the trial proved the band is far from ready for commercial use because it cannot match the building penetration of the C-band that underpins Verizon's 5G network.

Verizon and network partner Ericsson ran the call across a single 7 GHz channel beamed from a base station installed near a commercial Verizon site in Concord, California. The signal was transmitted to user equipment inside a 12-by-8-foot mobile enclosure lined with wall and window materials of varying thickness, which the operator said would enable differentiated testing of indoor coverage.

Tenorio delivered the verdict this week at the Brooklyn AI-Native 6G Summit. "The conclusion, apart from the relevance of a pre-standard call in the field, the conclusion was not super encouraging," he said. "Seven-gig versus 3.5, not surprisingly, have some challenges in penetrating buildings."

What does the test change for 6G planning?

Not the roadmap, but the engineering assumptions behind it. Lower-band spectrum travels further and passes through obstacles more easily than higher bands at the same power levels. Higher bands hold more spectrum, support more traffic and deliver higher speeds, but they demand denser antenna deployments and more complex multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) designs.

Tenorio said closing the gap requires substantial work: "It doesn't mean that we can't sort it out. It means that a lot more work needs to happen on more density in the antenna, higher active element number, of course higher output power, higher EIRP limits. All that need to be true and still there's probably challenges for seven to match the C-band footprint."

Regulators counter 6 GHz rivals

The regulatory context frames the urgency. The Federal Communications Commission is studying several bands for release to operators for 6G services: 1.675 GHz, 2.7 GHz, 4 GHz and 7 GHz. Much of that spectrum currently sits with federal agencies.

Arielle Roth, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information and administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), told the same conference the bands are being offered to counter other countries seeking to anchor 6G standards in the 6 GHz band. "Those bands … combined with what the FCC is doing on the upper C-band are really going to be critical to countering the efforts by some of our adversaries to locate the future of 6G in the 6 GHz band," Roth said, adding that NTIA is working with federal agency partners across the United States government to secure large channel sizes.

MmWave finds a second life in FWA

Tenorio, while flagging the challenges of higher bands, stressed they remain core to next-generation services as networks evolve from 5G to 6G. Millimeter-wave spectrum, generally defined as bands above 10 GHz, "makes a big difference" for customers in hot-spot environments such as stadiums, he said.

Verizon holds licenses for approximately 1,700 megahertz of spectrum across various mmWave bands. Tenorio tied that portfolio directly to fixed-wireless access plans laid out by CEO Dan Schulman.

"My boss was very clear on the earnings call early last week," Tenorio said. "We believe that we found a second life for millimeter wave to fuel our FWA ambitions. So that will be a role that I see in the long term will still be there. So it applies to 5G and 6G at the same time … you'll hear more about that shortly."

Schulman told investors Verizon has developed an "innovative solution" — technical details undisclosed — that will use the roughly 1,700 megahertz of mmWave holdings to deliver 1 Gb/s FWA service in metro areas nationwide. The service is expected to serve up to 15 million connections and complement a fiber buildout set to pass 50 million customers over the next several years.

The operator recently moved to acquire fixed-wireless broadband provider Starry to strengthen its multi-dwelling unit ambitions, and has trialed mmWave-based network technologies for several years.

The upgraded FWA service launches before the end of this year and positions Verizon to exceed its standing target of nine million FWA connections by 2028. "The truth of the matter is now that we have a high-speed FWA offer, we'll go well beyond that now because we have a lot more capabilities," Schulman said.