Verizon and AT&T plan post-pandemic 5G marketing blitz, even as consumer use cases remain unclear
U.S. wireless giants AT&T and Verizon had big plans last year to advertise why customers should upgrade their phones and start using 5G wireless.
Then the pandemic hit, and with everyone stuck at home, showing off blazing speeds and consumer use cases in stadiums, airports and public places wasn’t just irrelevant — it was gauche. Cloud gaming, checking instant odds on gambling apps from stadiums and downloading Netflix movies at the airport became far less important than the ability to work from home — a better message for cable companies who already deliver high-speed home broadband.
“We almost lost the year,” said David Christopher, EVP of partnerships & 5G ecosystem development for AT&T. “But now, people are excited to get out of their homes and experience 5G in the wild. We will dramatize use cases that matter to customers.”
AT&T and Verizon want to transfer customers as fast as possible to 5G networks — not just to recoup the heavy capital expenditure costs of building out updated nationwide networks but also to lock in customers and keep them from defecting to T-Mobile.
Both AT&T and Verizon have offered promotional pricing this year on 5G phones to retain customers and entice new ones. But T-Mobile tends to offer the cheapest prices among the big three, while also topping both Verizon and AT&T in download speed and 5G availability, according to Open Network’s July 2021 5G User Experience Report.
“A focus on 5G isn’t going to be flattering to either Verizon or AT&T,” said Craig Moffett, a wireless analyst at MoffettNathanson. “They are falling far behind T-Mobile in what will soon matter most: 5G speed and coverage. And they charge consumers much higher prices than T-Mobile.”
That puts pressure on both companies to sell consumers on why they should choose AT&T and Verizon — making 5G a marketing challenge as Americans emerge from pandemic quarantines.
Convincing consumers
Getting Americans excited about 5G may not be easy.
A J.D. Power survey last year found that only about a quarter of wireless subscribers said they believed 5G would be significantly faster than current 4G LTE technology, and only 5% of respondents said they’d be willing to pay more for 5G service.
Even the CEO of AT&T Communications, Jeff McElfresh, told CNBC last year he has “always tried to soften folks’ expectations around 5G.”
Much of the messaging about 5G so far has been about enterprise solutions. A Deloitte Insights consumer survey this year found that consumer use cases that demand the faster network simply don’t exist yet.
Verizon last year helped produce a documentary on 5G called “Speed of Thought,” which showed enterprise-focused examples, such as a robotic arm that a physician can use from anywhere and an augmented reality helmet for firefighters to help see through smoke. It also explored cities testing out 5G-enabled technology to avoid car collisions.
AT&T leaders have also said 5G’s real opportunity is in the business cases, particularly in the case of machines and equipment that are communicating via internet-of-things technology.
But both companies plan to illustrate specific consumer use cases in advertisements in the coming months to convince customers to upgrade.
In an outline of its 5G strategy for this year, AT&T detailed use cases including AR-aided shopping experiences for consumers in stores and downloading content at airports. Earlier this year, AT&T announced it would give its customers access to Bookful, which creates augmented reality experiences around books to try to improve reading comprehension. Christopher said viewing a street map through a phone is reliable and seamless in 5G, more easily allowing for activity like an augmented reality guide to a city, whereas it would have consistently lagged with 4G.
Verizon is currently running a number of 5G-related TV ad spots, including those with “Saturday Night Live” star Kate McKinnon about a promotion to receive $800 for a 5G phone when consumers trade in their old device.
Verizon has also done some marketing around what its 5G will do for gaming, both in its Super Bowl spot earlier this year and a digital video released in May that tried to illustrate what video game-like lag would look like in everyday life
But the Verizon campaigns don’t yet show why 5G is necessary or important for average consumers.
In one recent Verizon ad, viewers see a series of images — a man climbing a cell tower, a thunderstorm, cars driving on the street, landscape shots of cities — with voiced-over statements about “next generation service,” “broader spectrum,” and “the more going the extra mile matters.” But the only clear consumer use case shown in the one-minute commercial is video chatting — an activity that doesn’t require 5G.
It’s possible 5G advertising could backfire on both companies if consumers view networks as interchangeable and simply choose the lowest-price offering — which will be T-Mobile, Moffett said.
Christopher points out that educating consumers about 5G will benefit the entire industry. “We’re not going to spend our resources talking about the other guy,” he said. “Everything educates the customer about the broad benefits of 5G as a category, and that’s a good thing, too. We’re happy with that.”
Verizon’s 5G Home strategy
Verizon’s 5G marketing strategy hasn’t kicked into full gear yet because the company still hasn’t lit up its nationwide footprint of C-Band spectrum, said Manon Brouillette, recently named Verizon Consumer Group’s chief operating officer and deputy chief executive officer. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg has promised 100 million Americans will have access to speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second by March 2022.
Brouillette she believes 5G’s biggest selling point is as a replacement for cable broadband once Verizon’s so-called “ultra wideband” network in fully functional. Verizon spent nearly $53 billion on the airwaves earlier this year.
“When it comes to messaging, we need to make sure that any consumer understands you don’t need fiber to home anymore,” Brouillette said. “When C-band is here, we can make a sales pitch where we’ll offer one product, in-home and out-of-home, at low latencies, that has never been offered before. That’s the true game changer.”
Verizon already offers 5G Home that runs on millimeter wave technology — faster than C-band — to parts of 47 U.S. cities.
But even when Verizon’s 5G network is up and running across the country, the company still plans on selling separate products — mobile and home — even though they’ll operate on the same network. Verizon currently sells its 5G Home product at a $20 monthly discount for customers that also buy Verizon wireless.
Verizon is planning more “creative” ways to price home and mobile internet together in 2022, said Brouillette. But that packaging may not be enough to convince consumers to switch to Verizon — especially as cable companies such as Comcast and Charter offer their own mobile services (which use Verizon’s own network) with bundled discounts.
“It’s a myth believing one major ad campaign will solve everything,” said Brouillette. “It will come down to performance and execution.”
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
WATCH: Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg on subscriber growth surprise, outlook
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., wears a pair of Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
When it comes to the new $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, it’s the device’s accompanying fuzzy, gray wristband that truly dazzles.
I was able to try out Meta’s next-generation smart glasses that the social media company announced Wednesday at its annual Connect event. These are the first glasses that Meta sells to consumers with a built-in display, marking an important step for the company as it works toward CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of having headsets and glasses overtake smartphones as people’s preferred form of computing.
The display on the new glasses, though, is still quite simplistic. Last year at Connect, Meta unveiled its Orion glasses, which are a prototype capable of overlaying complex 3D visuals onto the physical world. Those glasses were thick, required a computing puck and were built for demo purposes only.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display, however, is going on sale to the public, starting in the U.S. on Sept. 30.
Though the new glasses include just a small digital display in their right lens, that screen enables unique visual functions, like reading messages, seeing photo previews and reading live captions while having a conversation with someone.
Controlling the device requires putting on its EMG sensor wristband that detects the electrical signals generated by a person’s body so they can control the glasses via hand gestures. Putting it on was just like strapping on a watch, except for the small, electric jolt I felt when it activated. It wasn’t as much of a shock as you feel taking clothes out of the dryer, but it was noticeable.
Donning the new glasses was less shocking, until I had them on and saw the little display emerge, just below my right cheek. The display is like a miniaturized smartphone screen but translucent so as to not obscure real-world objects.
Despite being a high-resolution display, the icons weren’t always clear when contrasted with my real-world field of view, causing the letters to appear a bit murky. These visuals aren’t meant to wrap around your head in crystal-clear fidelity, but are there for you to perform simple actions, like activating the glasses’ camera and glancing at the songs on Spotify. It’s more utility than entertainment.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses with the Meta Neural Band wristband at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
I had the most fun trying to perform hand gestures to navigate the display and open apps. By clenching my fist and swiping my thumb on the surface of my pointer finger, I was able to scroll through the apps like I was using a touchpad.
It took me several attempts at first to open the camera app through pinching my index finger and thumb together, and when the app wouldn’t activate I would find myself pinching twice, mimicking the double clicking of a mouse on a computer. But whereas using a mouse is second nature to me, I learned I have subpar pinching skills that lack the correct cadence and timing required to consistently open the app.
It was a bit strange and amusing to see people in front of me while I continuously pinched my fingers to interact with the screen. I felt like I was reenacting an infamous comedy scene from the TV show “The Kids in The Hall” in which a misanthrope watches people from afar while pinching his fingers and saying, “I’m crushing your head, I’m crushing your head!”
With the camera app finally opened, the display showed what I was looking at in front of me, giving me a preview of how my photos and videos would turn out. It was like having my own personal picture-in-picture feature like you would on a TV.
I found myself experiencing some cognitive dissonance at times as my eyes were constantly figuring out what to focus on due to the display always sitting just outside the center of my field of view. If you’ve ever taken a vision test that involves identifying when you see squiggly lines appearing in your periphery, you have a sense of what I was feeling.
Besides pinching, the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses can also be controlled using the Meta AI voice assistant, just as users can with the device’s predecessors.
When I took a photo of some of the paintings decorating the demo room’s halls, I was told by support staff to ask Meta AI to explain to me what I was looking at. Presumably, Meta AI would have told me I was looking at various paintings from the Bauhaus art movement, but the digital assistant never activated correctly before I was escorted to another part of the demo.
I could see the Meta Ray-Ban Display’s live captions feature being helpful in noisy situations, as it successfully picked up the voice of the demo’s tour guide while dance music from the Connect event blared in the background. When he said “Let’s all head to the next room,” I saw his words appear in the display like closed-captions on a TV show.
But ultimately, I was most drawn to the wristband, particularly when I listened to some music with the glasses via Spotify. By rotating my thumb and index finger as if I was turning an invisible stereo knob,
I was able to adjust the volume, an expectedly delightful experience.
It was this neural wristband that really drilled into my brain how much cutting-edge technology has been crammed into the new Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. And while the device’s high price may turn off consumers, the glasses are novel enough to potentially attract developers seeking more computing platforms to build apps for.
WATCH: Next important wearable tech will be glasses, says Meta’s chief product officer.
Navan, the business travel, payments, and expense management startup, filed on Friday afternoon to go public.
Its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that the company plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “NAVN.”
Navan reported trailing 12-month revenue of $613 million (up 32%) across over 10,000 customers, and gross bookings of $7.6 billion (up 34%), according to the S-1 filing.
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will act as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering.
Navan ranked No. 39 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, and also made the 2024 list.
The IPO market has bounced back this year, with deal activity up 56% across 156 deals (roughly 200 IPO filings in all) and $30 billion in proceeds, up over 23% year over year, according to IPO tracker Renaissance Capital. It has been the best year for IPOs since 2021, though still far below the Covid offering boom years, when over $142 billion (2021) and $78 billion (2020) was raised by IPOs.
This year’s deal flow has been highlighted by hot AI names like Coreweave, as well as some of the startup world’s most highly valued firms from the past decade, such as fintech Klarna and design firm Figma, crypto companies Circle, Bullish and Gemini, and some long-awaited IPO candidates finally hitting the market, such as Stubhub this week, though its shares have slumped since the first day of trading. Top Amazon reseller Pattern went public on Friday.
Other startups are expected to pursue deals given the increased investor appetite.
The Renaissance IPO ETF is up 20% this year.
Launched by CEO Ariel Cohen and co-founder Ilan Twig in 2015, Navan set out to disrupt a business travel sector where incumbents relied on clunky legacy tools and fragmented workflows.
The Palo Alto-based company, formerly called TripActions, refers to itself as an “all-in-one super app” for corporate travel and expenses.
Customers include Unilever, Adobe, Christie’s, Blue Origin and Geico.
It has also been pushing further into AI, with a virtual assistant named Ava handling approximately 50% of user interactions during the six months ended July 31, according to the filing, and a proprietary AI framework called Navan Cognition supporting its platform, as well as proprietary cloud infrastructure.
“We built Navan for the road warriors, for CEOs and CFOs who understand travel’s critical importance to their strategy, the finance teams who demand precision and control, the executive assistants juggling itineraries, and the program admins ensuring seamless events,” the co-founders wrote in an IPO filing letter.
“We saw firsthand the frustration of clunky, outdated systems. Travelers were forced to cobble together solutions, wait for hours on hold to book or change travel, and negotiate with travel agents. They struggled to adhere to company policies, with little visibility into those policies, and after all that, they spent even more time on tedious expense reports after a trip. We felt the pain of finance teams struggling to gain visibility into fragmented travel spending and to enforce policies, and the frustration of suppliers unable to connect directly with the high-value business travelers they sought to serve,” they wrote in the filing.
Revenue grew 33% year-over-year from $402 million in fiscal 2024 to $537 million in fiscal 2025, according to the S-1 filing. The company reported a net loss that decreased 45% year-over-year from $332 million in fiscal 2024 to $181 million in fiscal 2025. Gross margin improved from 60% in fiscal 2024 to 68% in fiscal 2025.
The business travel and expense space is crowded, with fellow Disruptors Ramp and Brex, and TravelPerk, as well as incumbents like SAP Concur and American Express Global Business Travel.
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A gamer plays soccer title Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 on an Xbox console.
Sezgin Pancar | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Microsoft said on Friday that it will increase the recommended retail price of several Xbox consoles in the U.S. starting in October because of “changes in the macroeconomic environment.”
The company said it would not increase prices for accessories such as controllers and headsets, and that prices in other countries would stay the same.
While Microsoft didn’t explicitly attribute the increase to the Trump administration’s tariffs, many consumer companies have been warning for months that higher prices are on the way. President Donald Trump has issued tariffs this year on multiple countries with a stated goal to bring more manufacturing to the U.S.
“We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration,” Microsoft said on its website.
It’s the second time Microsoft has raised prices on its consoles in the U.S. this year. Rivals Sony and Nintendo have also raised console prices in the U.S. as Trump’s tariffs went into effect.
Here are the changes, according to a PDF posted on Microsoft’s website:
- Xbox Series S will start at $399, up from $379 previously. A version with 1TB of storage costs $449.
- Xbox Series X Digital console now costs $599, a $50 increase. The Xbox Series X with a disc drive also got a $50 increase to $649.
- The most expensive version, with 2TB of storage, costs $799, up from $729.
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