The equipment for which Verizon’s biding its time will be able to receive 5G signals from transmitters that are much further away than current gear and routers can connect to, executive Ronan Dunne said (as reported by Light Reading). Once those devices are available, Verizon will be able to significantly expand the 5G Home coverage area. The current equipment uses a standard smartphone chipset, and “the footprint is significantly smaller,” Dunne said. Verizon aims to cover 30 million US households with 5G Home service in the next five to seven years, he noted.

It’s actually not the first time Verizon has delayed the expansion of the 5G Home network. It did so last January for similar reasons. Verizon’s 5G Home service debuted in parts of Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento in October 2018. It flipped the switch on the network in Chicago late last year. The 5G Home network is different from the 5G mobile network.

The initial service ran on an in-house approach to 5G and offers typical speeds of 300Mbps. It won’t compete with gigabit fiber, but it’s faster than many landline connections and, if you get an indoor antenna, let you set up yourself.

The main catch, as always, is the slow pace of 5G deployment. Verizon’s current 5G is available in parts of just 10 cities, and it can only roll out so quickly when the ultra-wideband technology requires an extensive number of cell sites to provide solid coverage. That reach should extend to 30 cities before 2019 is over, but that still means it could be a long while before 5G Home comes to your neighborhood. Still, that beats having to deal with the limited coverage of FiOS and other wired high-speed services.