- [Narrator] This is the true story
of one tech addicted journalist
who moved into a motor home for 24 hours
to find out through a series of challenges,
that 5G could power all of the home devices at once.
- Alright, come on in,
back here we've got my living room, bedroom
and so many gadgets.
All right, so this isn't really a reality TV show.
Now let's talk about what's happening here in this 5G RV
trademark pending.
See that pole.
That's a Verizon 5G small cell.
And inside the RV is a Verizon one plus eight
5G smartphone.
It's getting crazy fast speeds from the tower.
10 times faster than my home wifi In fact,
also inside the RV, 15 five other gadgets
that are being powered
by 5G via the phones hotspot feature.
Yes, all of them are getting 5G connectivity.
So why the heck did I do this?
Well, see, I live here in Jersey city.
Which is just being lit up with 5G service
from all the major U.S carriers.
But the fastest type of 5G
called millimeter wave requires
that you be within a few hundred feet from the cell site
to get top speeds.
And you guessed it my real home, not next to a pole yet.
Yes the speeds are insanely fast, but on a smartphone,
they're not really that helpful.
I mean, how often do you need to download five movies
in five minutes?
where I really need these speeds are at home
where I have multiple connected devices
and multiple family members using them.
So that's what I'm trying to test in here,
in a series of daunting home bandwidth challenges.
This is a wall?
But within a movable home.
And this in here is the bathroom,
with full 5G service.
But Before the challenges,
you have to understand the complicated world of 5G.
buckle up.
There are two types of 5G in the U.S at the moment,
millimeter wave 5G named
for its high frequency wave forms is insanely fast,
at least six times faster than 4G in my tasks,
and 10 times faster than my home wifi.
But the coverage is very limited.
You need to be within a few hundred feet or so of a cell
site to get the signal and the speed.
It doesn't penetrate walls or other obstacles very well,
rise in at and t mobile are putting up
millimeter wave cells throughout the country.
By this one,
I got 1300 megabits per second download speeds
on Verizon's network.
On my home wifi, I get a hundred megabits per second.
That 5G speed is bonkers.
Then there's sub six name
for his set of frequencies below six gigahertz.
It's not as fast as millimeter wave,
but it was faster than four G LTE tests.
And it's more practical because it works inside buildings
and the coverage is more widespread.
for now, only at and t and T mobile have sub six,
including here in Jersey city.
Verizon says it plans to roll out its sub six network
before the end of the year in the U.S.
in downtown Jersey city at and t sub six,
coverage averaged 80 to 90 megabits per second.
And T-Mobile sub six, got 120 megabits per second.
Dope, Pretty good.
At least when I could find strong 5G signal strength,
regardless of carrier,
you need a new 5G phone to get these speeds, okay.
Onto the challenges,
challenge one, video streaming.
To simulate my home,
I fare it up frozen two on the TV,
two, four K video streams on these laptops,
FaceTime call to my mom.
- You look great.
- And of course, for security,
I installed the connected doorbell and all three networks.
The streams were good and the video call was clear.
To really up the 5G stakes.
I added in a call to my dad
and placed another video call to my colleagues.
How do I look now?
- Now you look very clear.
- This test was hit or miss.
It was hard to tell what issues were caused by the network
or the phone's hotspots.
you can't see me?
These really aren't meant to connect 10 devices at a time.
Plus some of the carriers plans
have data caps on hotspot usage.
And slows down speeds once you exceeded.
challenge two, gaming.
I don't know a ton about gaming.
- Oh yeah.
Is that good?
teammate?
No, I got a puncher,
- So I made my producer, Kenny, a world renowned gamer.
Just kidding.
He only plays on the weekends,
jump in and start playing apex legends.
First on Verizon's millimeter wave network.
I know I'm a horrible boss.
- Listen, I was impressed.
The game played better than it did on my wired home
broadband connection by a long shot.
There's no rubber banding where you lag warped from one
place to another and no wag icons.
Finally, we can gain in the Bush.
- I was similarly impressed with the graphics
and speed on the Oculus quest VR headset
menus loaded super fast,
large games downloaded within minutes.
And I attended a live in person VR event.
Even while Kenny was playing on the Xbox
on the same network.
Verizon's network held strong T-Mobile's 5G performed
similarly, but at and t's was shaky.
Don't blame the internet
and Kenny complain The game was lagging.
Even when we tried to move to a better location,
challenged three,uploading.
Uploading a one gigabyte folder
to Google drive took six to seven minutes
on each 5G network.
On my home wifi It took four and a half minutes.
The most I was able to notch was about 60 megabits
on the upload on Verizon.
My home network has a hundred megabits per second
on upload speeds.
So what did we learn here today?
We learned that 5G is very, very fast
and a lot more useful when you can multiple gadgets
to that network, than just say a single phone.
Of course, this isn't the intended use of 5G yet,
and it will take time for the carriers to improve coverage
and release home routers and hotspots for this type of use.
Verizon already has a 5G home offering in some markets
and T-Mobile is gearing up to do the same.
Of course you'll probably end up paying more for it all too.
But for now, if I owned an RV,
I put out my family vacations one 5G pole at a time.
This was fun,
but I miss my family and I would like to go home.