Watch a Verizon 5G phone hit speeds faster than your home Internet

Enlarge / The blazing fast conclusion of Verizon's speed test. (credit: David Weissmann)

It was a bit earlier than scheduled, but Verizon switched on parts of its 5G network today, debuting in "select areas" of Minneapolis and Chicago. Every carrier out there likes to slice and dice definitions to have the "First 5G" everything, but in terms of using a real, mmWave 5G signal and something approximating a 5G smartphone, Verizon has made the most progress yet in getting a 5G ecosystem up and running.

5G is still in its very early stages, with access in only a few cities and almost zero device support, so it has been hard to know what 5G will really be like in the real world. Verizon spokesperson David Weissmann shared on Twitter the best look yet at 5G, where he showed a real-life 5G speed test, running on a real smartphone, getting data from a real 5G tower. Specifically Weissmann was out in Minneapolis, pulled out his Verizona Moto Z3 phone with the Moto 5G Mod attached, and loaded up the Ookla Speedtest.net app. Behold his speed test:

Thrilled to be in Minneapolis as @verizon 5G UWB makes history!

Speed test here in front of US Bank Stadium

Impressive! pic.twitter.com/jvW4YlYPMA

- David Weissmann (@djweissmann) April 3, 2019

Weissmann's speed test ended with a blazing-fast 762Mbps down and a 19ms ping (the video does not show upload speeds). Unless you are rocking gigabit fiber Internet at home, this is probably much faster than your home Internet connection. Ookla's latest aggregate speed reports peg the average US mobile download speed at 27Mbps, while the average fixed broadband download in the United States is at 96Mbps.

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