Verizon says its 7 GHz 6G field test shows a building-penetration gap against 3.5 GHz

Verizon’s chief technology officer, Yago Tenorio, said the first results from the company’s 7 GHz 6G field test were “not super encouraging” for indoor coverage. He spoke at the Brooklyn AI-Native 6G Summit, as reported by SDxCentral and Light Reading.

The test is the pre-standard call that Verizon and Ericsson announced on 15 October 2026. According to Ericsson, it used a 400 MHz carrier in the 7 GHz band at a Verizon commercial site in Concord, California, with an Ericsson proof-of-concept base station and a pre-standard 6G software stack. The user equipment sat in a wheeled enclosure of about 12 by 8 feet, lined with different wall and window materials so that indoor losses could be compared. Ericsson describes it as a proof of concept, not a commercial service.

Tenorio said 7 GHz has more trouble entering buildings than 3.5 GHz. Closing the gap would need denser antennas, more active elements, higher output power and higher EIRP limits, and even then 7 GHz may not match the C-band footprint. Neither company has published measured penetration losses. Tenorio also said that none of the US bands in the pipeline (2.7 GHz, 4 GHz and 7 GHz) gives a clear path to the channels of up to 400 MHz being set out for 6G. Light Reading reports that the NTIA will publish its study of 7125 to 7400 MHz on 10 December.

Why it matters

The upper mid-band is the main new spectrum on the table for 6G in the US. Verizon’s view comes from its own field setup, not from simulation. If 7 GHz needs larger arrays and higher EIRP to approach a 3.5 GHz cell grid, operators must choose between more sites and a smaller indoor footprint, and EIRP limits in the eventual FCC rules become a coverage question. Tenorio also tied wide channels to sensing, since range resolution improves with bandwidth. Treat the result as one pre-standard trial until loss figures are published.