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On April 23, I commented that carriers are opening their wallets to help their planned rollouts for 5G Wireless.  http://www.truepulse.com/5g-wireless-plans-open-wallets/  This referred to two news items: Verizon purchase of $1 billion in fiber from Corning, and the apparent bidding war between AT&T and Verizon to purchase Straight Path Communications.  Well, now we see just how serious Verizon is about 5G.

On Monday, Prysmian announced that Verizon had agreed to purchase another $300 million in fiber.  In fact, the title of the press release included “…to support the development of 5G…”

Viju Menon, Verizon’s Chief Supply Chain Officer, said, “Prysmian Group’s Telecom division is an established optical cable and connectivity solutions provider to Verizon. This strategic supply agreement helps ensure we can ramp supply in order to expand our network capacity and speed 5G deployment.”

Then yesterday came the big announcement – “Verizon to acquire Straight Path spectrum to accelerate 5G deployment”.  The winning bid over AT&T cost them $3.1 billion, almost twice the amount originally offered by AT&T.

“Verizon now has all of the pieces in place to quickly accelerate the deployment of 5G,” said Hans Vestberg, executive vice president and president of global network and technology at Verizon. “Combined with our recent transactions with Corning Incorporated, XO Communications, and Prysmian Group, this is another step to build the next-generation network for our customers.”

Straight Path’s key assets are a nationwide portfolio of millimeter wave, mmWave, spectrum, including 39 GHz and 28 GHz licenses.

Details on the Prysmian cable purchase are available at https://www.prysmiangroup.com/en/PR_Prysmian_Group_Verizon_news.html

Verizon’s announcement on the Straight Path purchase can be seen at http://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-acquire-straight-path-spectrum-accelerate-5g-deployment

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