Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said this week that the No. 1 U.S. wireless operator will nearly double its number of “millimeter wave” cities from a current count of 31 to 60 this year.

Speaking to investors Thursday, in an event covered by Fortune, Vestberg also said Verizon will double its number of fixed 5G cities from five to 10.

"We have the opportunity to continue our journey to be the leader on 5G," Vestberg said "We're not only expanding markets, we're also expanding coverage in all the markets."

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Millimeter-wave spectrum is made up of ultra-high frequency radio waves in the 24 Gigahertz to 100 GHz range, which can hold and deliver gobs more data. Early 5G networks using millimeter-wave technology promise speeds as high as 6 Gigabits per second, evolving one day to as high as 20 Gbps. Latency is also vastly improved, too, going from 20-70 milliseconds with 4G to as low as the ultra-responsive sub-1 millisecond range.

Establishing ubiquitous 5G coverage is no small engineering feat. The ultra-high frequencies require signals to broadcast at very short range — around 600 to 800 feet — meaning Verizon must festoon every street in each city where it deploys 5G with gobs of “small cell” devices. These short-throw, ultra-high frequencies are also prone to all sorts of interference, falling leaves included. And they don’t penetrate walls or buildings.

Also read: 5G Is Here — And for Real This Time

It’s for this reason that T-Mobile, in its aggressive bid for ubiquitous nationwide 5G coverage, is using lower frequencies for its 5G rollout, even though the offering delivers far less speed.

Vestberg touted a Verizon plan called dynamic spectrum sharing, which will allow the operator to mix lower and higher spectrums, delivered on the same cellular tower, and have customers seamlessly transition between them.

"This year we will launch nationwide 5G based on dynamic spectrum sharing," he said. "We're going to launch that when we think it's commercially right, when we see enough handsets out in the market.”

Verizon is charging subscribers to its base unlimited plan an additional $10 a month if they want to tap into 5G. It has it will also charge that fee soon to subscribers of higher end service plans.

To use Verizon’s 5G services, customers have a choice of investing in only two pricey handset offerings right now, each tagged at over $1,000. But Verizon said its 5G phone selection will soon expand to around 20 models, some priced as low as $600.

This week, Charter Communications, which has a wholesale agreement to use the Verizon network for its Spectrum Mobile service, said it will sell 5G phones made by Samsung. 

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said this week that the No. 1 U.S. wireless operator will nearly double its number of “millimeter wave” cities from a current count of 31 to 60 this year. 

Speaking to investors Thursday, in an event covered by Fortune, Vestberg also said Verizon will double its number of fixed 5G cities from five to 10. 

"We have the opportunity to continue our journey to be the leader on 5G," Vestberg said "We're not only expanding markets, we're also expanding coverage in all the markets."

Millimeter-wave spectrum is made up of ultra-high frequency radio waves in the 24 Gigahertz to 100 GHz range, which can hold and deliver gobs more data. Early 5G networks using millimeter-wave technology promise speeds as high as 6 Gigabits per second, evolving one day to as high as 20 Gbps. Latency is also vastly improved, too, going from 20-70 milliseconds with 4G to as low as the ultra-responsive sub-1 millisecond range.

Establishing ubiquitous 5G coverage is no small engineering feat. The ultra-high frequencies require signals to broadcast at very short range — around 600 to 800 feet — meaning Verizon must festoon every street in each city where it deploys 5G with gobs of “small cell” devices. These short-throw, ultra-high frequencies are also prone to all sorts of interference, falling leaves included. And they don’t penetrate walls or buildings.

Also read: 5G Is Here — And for Real This Time

It’s for this reason that T-Mobile, in its aggressive bid for ubiquitous nationwide 5G coverage, is using lower frequencies for its 5G rollout, even though the offering delivers far less speed. 

Vestberg touted a Verizon plan called dynamic spectrum sharing, which will allow the operator to mix lower and higher spectrums, delivered on the same cellular tower, and have customers seamlessly transition between them. 

"This year we will launch nationwide 5G based on dynamic spectrum sharing," he said. "We're going to launch that when we think it's commercially right, when we see enough handsets out in the market.”

Verizon is charging subscribers to its base unlimited plan an additional $10 a month if they want to tap into 5G. It has it will also charge that fee soon to subscribers of higher end service plans. 

To use Verizon’s 5G services, customers have a choice of investing in only two pricey handset offerings right now, each tagged at over $1,000. But Verizon said its 5G phone selection will soon expand to around 20 models, some priced as low as $600.

This week, Charter Communications, which has a wholesale agreement to use the Verizon network for its Spectrum Mobile service, said it will sell 5G phones made by Samsung. 

Verizon reported the loss of 52,000 Fios TV customers in the second quarter, with the No. 1 U.S. wireless company actively looking to offload its video business to YouTube TV.

“We have continued our network-as-a-service concept, where we are now collaborating with YouTube TV to offer up not only our Fios customers, but also the wireless customers, as well.”

Since last year, Verizon has been actively promoting Google’s virtual pay TV service, YouTube TV, to both its Fios wireline and wireless customers, new 5G services included. This is, in many cases, at the expense of the legacy Fios TV linear TV service.

Fios TV’s loss of another 52,000 users compares to a loss of 38,000 in the second quarter of 2018. The service has 4.27 million remaining customers. And, of course, as it loses size and scale, leverage in program licensing further erodes … thus incentivizing Verizon to cede even more of its customers to YouTube TV.

“Again working on the motto where we outlined earlier this year, how we can partner with some of these content players instead of investing ourselves in it and seeing that we can bring your seamless service for our customer, but also making it very efficient for ourselves and for our customers,” Vestberg said.

As for Verizon’s broader wirelines business, Fios Internet added 28,000 subscribers during the second quarter vs. a loss of 10,000 users in the year-ago period.

The company reported 451,000 net additions on the wireless side vs. 199,000 in the second quarter of last year.

Overall, Verizon reported consolidated revenue of $32.1 billion in the second quarter, down 0.4% year-over-year and lower than analyst estimates of $32.4 billion. 

Will Verizon abandon its effort to make millimeter wave spectrum a key component for both its fixed wireless and mobile 5G network rollouts in major urban areas, given that a growing body of evidence suggests that the density required for the spectrum’s use is economically infeasible to build?

Speaking during Verizon’s first quarter earnings call Tuesday, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg sidestepped the question. Millimeter wave spectrum, he said, “has lived up to our expectation on performance.”

He did concede, however, that “We will need to remind ourselves that this is not the a coverage spectrum because we will do it as far as it is economically sustainable.”

Related: Comcast and Charter Should Let Verizon Build Small Cells on Their Networks: Analyst

High-band millimeter wave spectrum has been an early focus in Verizon’s rollout of fixed wireless 5G services in markets including Los Angeles, Houston, Indianapolis and Sacramento. It is through millimeter wave that Verizon can truly deliver on its promises for the kinds of high speeds and low latency that could steal market share from cable companies.

But as research firm MoffettNathanson pointed out in detailed report on Verizon’s Sacramento 5G rollout, the company faces a seemingly impossible task in creating enough small-cell density to achieve ubiquitous millimeter wave coverage of fixed 5G services.

In fact, in its very spotty early fixed 5G deployments, MoffettNathanson noted, “even a 100-fold improvement in their current coverage and penetration wouldn’t be enough to make their existing architecture economically interesting.”

And earlier this week, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray piled on, noting in a blog post, "Some of this is physics—millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum has great potential in terms of speed and capacity, but it doesn’t travel far from the cell site and doesn’t penetrate materials at all. It will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments.”

Then, in a report released this morning, MoffettNathanson doubled down, wondering if Verizon had “bet on the wrong (spectrum) horse,” and also if the wireless company should pivot to acquiring more mid-band spectrum. This would deliver lower performance but at more cost-effective infrastructure needs

Still, Vestberg seemed to hold out hope for millimeter wave. “We’re very early on in the journey,” he told investment analysts. “I think that no one else in the whole industry knows more than Verizon about [millemeter wave] … From what we have seen on it, it’s a good strategy.”

LAS VEGAS—With marketing hype surrounding 5G already reaching levels unprecedented even for the wireless industry, and his company having made arguably the biggest marketing push behind the technology so far, Verizon CEO Hans Vesterberg stressed during his jam- -packed CES keynote at the Venetian’s Palazzo Ballroom that 5G is going be, well, a big thing.

How big?

“It’s going to change everything,” said Vestberg, athletically clad in a tight Verizon-branded T-shirt that wouldn’t be out of place at an Apple or Google product launch.

“It’s quantum leap over 4G,” Vestberg added, in a statement he repeated no less than four times.

Did he also use the term “fourth industrial revolution,” another favorite of 5G marketers? Yup. At least three times.

Related: Cable Industry Set to Plug ’10G’ at CES

“It’s a huge opportunity for all of us and our society,” added Vestberg, the 53-year-old Swedish businessman who took over the lead executive role for the No. 1 U.S. wireless company last year.

Of course, presenting what is the top business priority for Verizon, as well as its leading competitors, AT&T and T-Mobile, on what is consumer technology’s biggest stage, CES, required Vestberg to define the market opportunity for the fifth-generation wireless technology standard in the most grandiose of terms. And credit the former Swedish Olympic Committee President with understanding the opportunity and delivering a largely effective presentation.

To accomplish this goal, he received plenty of onstage help from various Verizon technology partners.

Making a brief appearance, for example, was New York Times CEO Mark Thompson, who presented how 5G could be used for new innovative story-telling techniques. Verizon is a partner on a new 5G journalism lab within the Times newsroom. With 5G, the paper could not only enable its reporters to include interactive and immersive still 3D image and video features with their stories, Thompson explained, its marketers could better target readers based on location, time of day and “mood space”—kind of like the search and discovery tools streaming video services use to build audiences today.

There was also a longer appearance on stage by Mariah Scott, president of commercial drone company Skyward, who showed how drones were being used in conjunction with 5G as an everyday tool by Southeastern U.S. utility company Southern. Instead of sending men up perilously high to inspect utility poles and to continuously monitor the utility’s 27,000 miles of lines, a network of drones is using 5G’s instantaneous communications capabilities to deliver network operators real-time status from up high in the sky.

This was an effective demonstration of 5G’s ability to control up to 1 million devices in a 1 kilometer square mile.

Making another appearance was Dr. Christopher Morley, co-founder of Medivis, a company attempting to blend technologies like virtual and augmented reality with medicine. Morley showed how 5G could vastly improve complex medical producers, including brain surgery, allowing practitioners to “see through” patients.

Related: Verizon Opens ‘5G Experience Lab,’ Further Ups the Hype But Not Its Game

But for those of us who have observed Verizon’s initial “limited” 5G launch last year in Los Angeles, Houston, Indianapolis and Sacramento, and have wondered just where in those cities the network service might actually be available, Vestberg presented what was perhaps the most impressive demo of them all—a live 5G-enabled feed, from Houston, of an actual 5G customer

The young man’s name is Clayton, and he said he uses the service for remote work, watching streaming video and for casual gaming.