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Someone correct me if I'm wrong but won't this put Verizon in the opposite situation that they're in now? Doesn't Verizon have coverage in most places because they were able to build early and keep their old CDMA towers in place? With the change to 5G aren't all the LTE/GSM carriers now in a better place to update to 5G? Won't this actually cause Verizon to require huge network and infrastructure upgrades?

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The move away from CDMA happened with LTE. LTE required a complete network upgrade to add in the eNodeBs to supplement the BTS (basestations) from the CDMA world.

5G (3gpp rev 15 or newer) does require new hardware but a lot of networks have been planning for this. Sprint has been rolling out new MIMO capable antennas for use with 5g. Verizon similarly has been future proofing before the standard was finished. There will be new equipment required no matter what though. Especially with Verizon pushing millimeter in cities.

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