Verizon inked a deal to speed wireless infrastructure upgrades in the city of San Diego, California, as it pushes ahead with plans to launch mobile 5G in 30 cities this year.

Under the agreement, Verizon will invest more than $100 million to deploy new infrastructure and equipment across the city, including digital fibre and small cells to roughly 60,000 city-owned lamp posts. In return, officials agreed to streamline issuance of permits.

Additionally, Verizon will supply 500 smartphones to the San Diego Police Department and 50 tablets to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. The operator will also deploy traffic monitoring technology at five crash-prone junctions to improve access to vehicular patterns and traffic flow data for city officials.

In a statement, Verizon SVP of Engineering Ed Chan said the updates will be “foundational to the future deployment of 5G network technology here”.

The deal comes as Verizon looks to rapidly expand on early mobile 5G deployments in two US cities.

Cost of collaboration
Deals like the one in San Diego provide value in helping overcome barriers to infrastructure deployments in key locations.

But, after signing an infrastructure agreement with the city of San Jose, California in June 2018, Verizon’s SVP of Federal Regulatory and Legal Affairs William Johnson noted in a blog post they come with a hefty cost.

“These arrangements leverage private sector investment, not public dollars, and the practical reality is that capital budgets are limited, and expense budgets have to be managed. So higher costs to deploy in one city mean less network infrastructure deployment in others.”