Texas Border Business
McALLEN, Texas – Verizon has recently made major upgrades to the network serving customers in McAllen, TX. These upgrades are part of a multi-year redesign of its network architecture to stay ahead of exponential data usage increases, upgrade the technology in the network, and to pave the way for personalized customer experiences. Network upgrades in McAllen include deploying new cell sites to extend coverage and capacity in local communities. They also include adding more capacity on fiber optic cables to move more data through the network and adding bandwidth to the cellular network to accommodate new services like wireless internet service for homes and businesses. Specifics on the upgrades include:
- Engineers have been aggressively deploying 5G Ultra Wideband service throughout McAllen which now offers 5G Ultra Wideband to 99% of the population. Most notably that service has recently expanded in McAllen, Mission, Edinburg, Harlingen and other communities in the area.
- McAllen’s exceptional 5G coverage uses Verizon’s recently acquired C-band spectrum. Verizon engineers have been limited to using 60 MHz of C-band spectrum to deliver 5G service to customers. By the end of the year, customers in McAllen will be able to take advantage of significantly more spectrum as it becomes available for 5G Ultra Wideband, almost tripling the bandwidth available to customers. That additional bandwidth will turbo charge the service, offering significantly higher speeds, much greater capacity to accommodate more customers and more robust services
- Even as engineers provide wireless service in more places, they are also enhancing the service by deploying leading edge, modernized technology in the area. Engineers have upgraded the hardware in many of the cell sites providing service throughout McAllen adding capacity for more data to be used by customers, providing power efficiency, and providing virtualization. This technology milestone allows Verizon to rapidly respond to customers’ varied latency and computing needs, and provides greater flexibility and agility in the introduction of new products and services. The move to a cloud-based, virtualized architecture with standardized interfaces in every part of the network leads to greater flexibility, faster delivery of services, greater scalability, and improved cost efficiency in networks.
- Lastly, the addition of 5G service and the many additional wireless solutions allow far more data to travel on the wireless network in McAllen. That exponential increase in data carried into and out of the cell sites serving the community requires upgraded fiber optic cable links. Fiber optic cables are used to move data between cell sites and connect those sites to the rest of the network. Verizon has increased the capacity on the fiber connections in many cell sites in the McAllen area so they can carry 10 times the amount of data.
*Rankings based on the RootMetrics® McAllen RootScore® Report: 1H 2023. Tested with best commercially available smartphones on three mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary. The RootMetrics award is not an endorsement of Verizon.
