Roll out

To introduce something to the public for the first time is to "roll it out"

Today's story: Implications of 5G
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Roll out

Ohhh, do we have a good phrasal verb for you today! Roll out—and I’ll just say in advance, I didn’t do this on purpose. You’ll find out what I mean in a second.

When you roll something out, you introduce it to the public for the first time; usually we say this when a product or service first becomes available. We say that product is being rolled out. I told you earlier that 5G is being rolled out now in some places in the US, UK, and South Korea. Motorola is rolling out its Moto Z4, which is capable of using these fast 5G networks. Samsung’s Galaxy S10 can also access 5G speeds. Verizon Wireless, one of the big mobile providers in the US, is rolling out its fast 5G service in Chicago and Minneapolis. They’re only going to have it in a handful of places, so it’s not service that people can use on a daily basis. But eventually they’ll roll it out to the rest of the city, and the rest of the country.

Coca-Cola is rolling out a new flavor: Coca-Cola with coffee. We talked about that in Episode 151 They’re rolling it out as Coca-Cola con Café in Spanish-speaking countries. They rolled it out early in Japan, years ago, as Coca-Cola Plus Coffee. I’m just waiting for them to roll it out here in the US. I know a lot of you have seen it in Mexico and Brazil, so clearly they rolled it out in Latin America before doing so in the US.

Facebook is rolling out a new cryptocurrency, the Libra. We might talk about that in a future episode. The global roll-out of Libra is scheduled for the first half of 2020. Spotify is rolling out something interesting here in the US. I think it’s called Drive Time. It’s going to be like a daily playlist that combines little snippets of news, information, and music. It’s supposed to mimic the experience of listening to morning drive-time radio in your car, but for the modern age. I don’t know all the details yet—they just announced it last week, I think—but you’ll probably be able to customize your daily playlist by telling Spotify what news sources you like and what kind of music you like. That’s pretty cool—they haven’t rolled it out yet, but it’s coming.

Speaking of, it’s not here yet. I cannot give you any details. I’m just not in a position to provide any details just yet. But. JR and I are working hard on rolling out something new for the Plain English audience. It’s more than just an idea, at this point, but it’s not really ready to be announced yet. But we are working hard every day—we even have a video call every weekend to plan and talk about it—we are working hard every day on this new and exciting chapter here at Plain English and we expect to be able to roll something out this summer, July, maybe, but more likely in August.

JR’s song of the week

Today’s song comes from our old buddy Jana from Germany, who inspired our episode about the zero-waste lifestyle. The song is “Careless Whisper” by George Michael, it’s an old one: 35 years old this year. It was really popular when it came out; it was a number-one hit in 25 countries. I didn’t recognize the title when JR first sent it over, but after I heard the first couple of notes I recognized it. It has prominent saxophones throughout, but especially at the beginning. JR says that it’s used in commercials for hotels, since it sounds kind of romantic. I don’t know where I recognized it from, but it’s one of those songs that you know you know it, even if you don’t remember any words or where you heard it from. So let us know if this is a song you ever hear in TV or commercials. “Careless Whisper,” with the saxophones, and thanks to Jana and JR for the addition to our playlists this week. If you would like to nominate your favorite song in English, you can send an email to [email protected].


That’s all for today’s episode of Plain English! I hope I was able to whet your appetite about our upcoming global roll-out of—I can’t tell you what! But something exciting. We’ll always be here; the program is not going away. No need to worry. But if you want to be among the first to know about our exciting new adventure, then you’ll want to be on our e-mail list, which you can join at PlainEnglish.com/mail . You’ll also get some other great free resources with every episode, including summaries of the main topic, links to English articles, and an extra vocabulary word for each episode. Since we have two episodes a week, that’s 104 new words a year, just for subscribers to PlainEnglish.com/mail .

Thanks again for being with us, and we will be back on Monday.

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Story: Implications of 5G