Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Verizon is making a big expansion of its 5G network: the carrier is now rolling out nationwide support for the new networking standard, which will reach more than 200 million people.
Until now, Verizon’s 5G has been almost exclusively focused on the mmWave band, which offers the fastest speeds but suffers from extremely poor range. That fact has meant that while AT&T and T-Mobile have been able to boast about broad 5G coverage for the entire country, Verizon has been limited to a few street corners of a small number of cities.
The reliance on mmWave has also meant that Verizon has had to work with device manufacturers to create bespoke mmWave versions of phones specifically for…