Verizon Incentivizes 5G Subscription With Free Apple TV 4K Or YouTube TV

Verizon is close to beginning its rollout of 5G internet service in the United States, but it needs incentives to sweeten the pot for potential new customers. As such, Verizon announced Tuesday that people who get the service carrier’s new 5G network installed in their homes later this year can get either a free Apple TV 4K or a YouTube TV subscription, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report.

At first, Verizon’s 5G service will only be in four cities “in the second half of 2018,” according to Verizon’s press release. Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Houston and Sacramento will be the first places in the U.S. with 5G home internet.

In order to make early adoption more enticing for residents of those cities, Verizon will let them choose between the two aforementioned products. The Apple TV 4K is a set-top streaming box with limited gaming support, which retails for a base price of $179. As its name implies, it supports 4K displays. YouTube TV, on the other hand, is a $40 per month streaming service for cord-cutters that supports most major TV networks across the news, entertainment and sports spectrums.

Basically, it is a choice between a piece of hardware that might not be useful for people who have smart TVs or gaming consoles, or a TV subscription that might not be useful to people who already have one of those.

Both products would theoretically show off the capabilities of 5G internet. The fifth generation of wireless service can reach download speeds of up to 50 times higher than those offered by 4G LTE, the current standard, according to Verizon. Just as 3G brought about mobile internet and 4G made mobile streaming more viable, Verizon is betting on 5G as a replacement for cable broadband internet in homes.

Installing Verizon’s 5G internet in a home will essentially do away with internet cables that have long been a residential standard. The router will connect to the wireless 5G signal but will still have ethernet ports for customers who do not want too many devices on the same wireless network at once, according to CNBC.

There are questions about whether or not wireless 5G can ever truly replace cable internet. Wired internet is still more reliable in underground settings, for example. However, Verizon seems confident enough to start rolling it out this year and beyond. LG announced on Tuesday it will try to have a 5G-compatible smartphone in the U.S. in the first half of 2019.