Preparing for 5G
Verizon upgrading North Las Vegas building for next-stage tech
Telecommunications giant Verizon has started updating a North Las Vegas site for 5G, the next standard for wireless technology that is still years away.
City-issued permits detail about $16 million of work to upgrade Las Vegas’ so-called network switch, which handles voice calls and wireless data transmissions for the region.
The work includes an 8,000-square-foot addition to the building near the intersection of Gowan Road and Commerce Street and remodel of an existing power plant and network room on-site.
The upgrades accommodate new technology and increased customer demand for data, Verizon spokeswoman Jeannine Brew said.
The technological improvements
are part of Verizon’s road to 5G, Brew said.
“Not only do they provide very tangible benefits today, but they also lay the groundwork for our next-generation network,” Brew said. “We’re expecting to be first to marketwith5g.”
The standard Verizon now uses is called 4G Long Term Evolution, which uploads and downloads data at about 10 times the speed of previous standard 3G.
The 5G networks will move data about 10 times the speed of currently available 4G technology.
Construction is set to finish in about six months. Because of Verizon’s maintenance schedule, Las Vegas is the only place in Brew’s 12-state market to undergo this construction.
“In this case, the existing size and scope of the facility would not accommodate future needs,” she said. “We are similarly planning before it’s an issue.”
The construction does not mean Las Vegas will be one of the first Verizon markets to get 5G, she said.
In November, the company announced that five markets will have 5G broadband services for residents in 2018. The only market named so far is Sacramento, California, which is scheduled to get 5G during the second half of the year.
VERIZON
earnings grew by 5 cents in November to $26.55 — part of an overall increase of 2.5 percent since the same period last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That’s a growth rate that lags significantly behind pre-recession levels, when year-over-year wage increases exceeded 4 percent.
Economists have struggled to find a single cause for the stubbornly slow pace. Some point to demographics: Baby boomers are retiring in droves, and the younger workers replacing them command smaller paychecks. Some suspect automation might be eliminating formerly high-paying jobs. Others suspect it’s due to a change in what types of employment are available, with growth in low-paying jobs outpacing more lucrative ones.
The lack of progress has frustrated policymakers, particularly because the economy is pulling people back into the labor market who had given up on finding work entirely in the wake of a devastating recession.
But so far, the pay bumps have been uneven. In construction, for example, average hourly pay has shot up 2.9 percent to $29.17 since last November, driven in part by rebuilding efforts in hurricane-walloped states, such as Texas and Florida.
Information workers, or those who make a living on the Internet, in publishing and in telecommunications, saw a 3.4 percent year-overyear raise to $38.59, the same as employees in the high-paying world of finance.
Leisure and hospitality workers have gotten a disproportionately large boost, 3.6 percent, but they still make an average of roughly $15 an hour, less than the other major job categories.
Wages in manufacturing, however, appear especially stagnant, growing only 1.9 percent since last November. That’s despite recent job growth in the sector, which Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta pointed out Friday has an unemployment rate of 2.6 percent.
“The lowest ever recorded,” he said in a statement.
The economy added 228,000 jobs in November, government economists reported Friday, maintaining a streak of growth that took off during Obama’s first term and kept pace through President Trump’s first year in office. Monthly job gains have averaged out at 174,000 in 2017 and 187,000 in 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America, a credit insurance company, said the rising demand for workers at comanies across the country lately isn’t enough to significantly increase paychecks.
“Workers should get a share in that increase,” he said, but “we also have labor coming back in off the sidelines.”