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COSTA’S CORNER
“Eyegore, more power!!! More Power!! Life! Life, do you hear me?! Give my creation LIIIFEEE!!!!!!”

Frederick Frankenstein to his loyal man-servant Eyegore in Mel Brook’s comedy masterpiece, “Young Frankenstein.”

Today begins a new era. Verizon is the first major telecommunications company to bring 5G technology to its customers, beating rivals in the US and Europe. The technology is expected to be a game changer as far as what we will be able to do through these new pipes. Streaming will be seamless, huge amounts of data can move quickly with no slowdowns and the potential elimination of cable wires into every home. This last point is the one that I think will be the most amazing.
You will have the ability to stream anything you want to any device you want and not have to be hooked up to a router in your home. There will be no need to “bundle” products from a cable provider and you can cherry-pick the services you actually want or maybe you only pay for a show you like.
The options will be limitless and the companies holding the bag will be the cable companies. Good riddance.
Let’s just see if that’s how it develops.
While cable companies have promoted “tons of options” as far as what you have to pay for coming into your house, they really have just transferred that cost to other services they “provide” you.
Try just getting wi fi access in your home without the cable tv subscriptions and the landline phone that no one ever uses. If you get it separately, they charge anywhere from 69.99 a month to 99.99 a month. Really?
Try just getting a cable TV package and the router with no landline. First off, they will spend fifteen minutes on the phone trying to talk you into the bundle and a special deal they have running for a very limited time. Secondly, if you tell the sales rep to drop it and just give you a price on the two features, it’s more, way more, than the bundled package. How does that even make sense?
That’s the way they operate. Sell you more of what you don’t need and less of what you can actually use.
Verizon does many things really well and FIOS is a prime example. It’s light years ahead of any other service but you pay for it. I am sure that Verizon will not abandon FIOS. They will more likely improve the speed and reliability with 5G since they spent over 75 billion dollars the last 12 years turning their regular fiber optic lines into FIOS capable delivery.
However, there will be an opportunity here for Verizon or any other telecommunications provider to actually change the game with 5G. The rollout will be expensive, and we may not see full integration for five or so years but the potential here is limitless and let’s hope that some new players enter the game and force the major providers to rethink their old business practices.

One thing I will not be is long any cable companies, and everything is still the same.

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