San Francisco, March 1 (IANS): As the world goes gaga over 5G, US telecom service provider Verizon has advised people to turn off the 5G access on their smartphones to save battery life.

In a tweet on Sunday, Verizon support said that "one way to help conserve battery life is to turn on LTE" if users found their batteries were "draining faster than normal."

However, the fact is that one does not need to turn on 4G (or LTE) as LTE is always enabled as a fallback for the 5G network.

But Verizon is obviously being cautious so as not to actually tell its customers to "turn off 5G", reports The Verge.

Verizon has spent more than $45 billion on bidding for a new faster spectrum while its rival AT&T has spent $23.4 billion.

Verizon's 5G network uses a technology called DSS, which in many instances is actually slower than the LTE network it's trying to replace.

The company has announced big 5G plans for 2021.

One of the top priorities is to expand coverage of its ultra-fast mmWave coverage, which is currently restricted to parts of some cities in the US, the report mentioned.

AT&T's nationwide 5G network also relies on DSS with speeds close to or lower than 4G LTE.