The State of 5G: When, How Fast & The Future It Will Enable

[Julio Franco]

Although 5G may seem like just another generational wireless upgrade, touting more speed and less latency, the years-long migration will require an expansion of cellular networks worldwide to include millions of new antennas that will become the backbone of IoT and its billions of sensor-laden devices, from smart dust to smart cars.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1582-state-of-5g-wireless/

 

[gamoniac]

Great read. I really love how you cover the background, hurdles and efforts, controversy, and future implications and impacts as a whole. It's also timely and gives plenty of good references, and is not too long. It is definitely well worth the my Sunday night time for a leisure and informative read. Nicely done, Mr. Stanley. I look forward to the next one.

 

[BorisMcKennedy]

Interesting article, although a lot of this technology is redundant, if its not affordable (at all, or for a significant real world data cap).
Its be great to download a movie, but not if my data would be exhausted doing so. Data quantity needs to be cheap, as well as fast.
Here in Perth, Australia I can already download at 120 - 130mb/sec and upload at ~30mb on LTE so those quoted 4G speeds seem quite low...

 

[psycros]

Know what would be cool? If they would stop trying to find ways to waste all this potential new bandwidth with things that don't matter. Nobody needs an internet-enabled thermostat, blender or sex toy. Ultra-capitalists never seem to run out of ways to squander a great resource.

 

[koohansen]

*Looks at Canada*
You sill see telcos offering MEGABYTES of data as a bundled subscription.
Even on 4G that can be consumed easily

 

[fktech]

Theory meets reality. Or Verizon throttling!

 

[Urgelt]

5G seems to be a chaotic subject.

I would rank several questions as more important than 'when:'

- Health risks? The ancient Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes and went more than a little nuts as a civilization. Let's not repeat their mistake with 5G that damages brains and kills people.

- Cost? What's this beast going to cost consumers, and are consumers' pockets deep enough to pay it? Will 5G exacerbate the technological divide between haves and have-nots?

- How does 5G fit in with plans for building out satellite constellations supporting internet access?

 

[Boilerhog146]

By the chart I'm still getting speeds from 2001. over a DSL phone line ,and paying for todays speeds .thieves ,I called them in another thread ,paying for 7 meg Down and getting 2.my downloads actually sit at 380 K/s as I download , World of tanks patches as an example.or UBI games ,wildlands .I'm being blatantly robbed ,and can take it or leave it. I used to get angry about it,now I would just like to strangle the life out of one of their execs with a length of phone line.

by the time they get that constellation up and running the tech will be outdated and slow. but the 40,000,000 new rural clients won't notice anything only an improvement over what they had.

 

[Squid Surprise]

5G seems to be a chaotic subject.

I would rank several questions as more important than 'when:'

- Health risks? The ancient Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes and went more than a little nuts as a civilization. Let's not repeat their mistake with 5G that damages brains and kills people.

- Cost? What's this beast going to cost consumers, and are consumers' pockets deep enough to pay it? Will 5G exacerbate the technological divide between haves and have-nots?

- How does 5G fit in with plans for building out satellite constellations supporting internet access?

You're equating the collapse of the Roman Empire with poisoned lead pipes??!?!!?

Yes, they used lead - so did everyone else at the time - lead was in their makeup too... Life expectancy was so low, that lead poisoning had virtually ZERO effect on day-to-day life.

5G, on the other hand, could have far more far-reaching consequences. What is scary is that despite growing evidence that cell radiation could be detrimental to human (and other species) health, it is going ahead anyways.

Nothing will stand before progress.... let's just hope that those papers that point to health risks are all mistaken...

 

[Xabi Granja]

"By comparison, 4G's standards call for a peak download of 100Mb/s and upload of 50Mb/s, while a recent report pegged T-Mobile as having the fastest 4G LTE download speeds in the U.S. topping out at 19.4Mb/s, second to Verizon's 17.8Mb/s."

Don't you mean T-Mobile is "just above Verizon's 17.8Mb/s", instead of "second to"? That'd mean T-Mo is weaker than Verizon, when you're saying the opposite, that they're faster than Verizon, who are second in speed.

Wonderful article by the way! My only worry with all this new data that we're promised is... what about all the data caps most of us have? If services increase the data they upload and download, I'm going to reach that 5GB monthly cap waaaaaay faster than normal. So, once our 5G connectivity becomes exponentially faster, either carriers also increase cap sizes exponentially or we're all going to pay exponentially more as we constantly go over our data caps.

 

[Uncle Al]

Lots and lots of promises .... I hope the author keeps track and updates us on each one that has actually been fulfilled and remains beneficial to the user rather than the supplier.......

 

[p51d007]

LMAO! In my neck of the woods, the (at&t) system is so overloaded, that during the day, we are lucky in some parts of the city, to get 10 down, 3-4 up.

 

[Jamlad]

Yes, they used lead - so did everyone else at the time - lead was in their makeup too... Life expectancy was so low, that lead poisoning had virtually ZERO effect on day-to-day life..

No. It wasn't. I wish people would stop parroting this. The *average* life expectancy was low because the infant mortality rate was so high. The fact is that if you survived childhood chances were that you'd live to your 50s/60s. Most Roman emperors died in their 60s-70s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire#Mortality)

 

[Lounds]

Lets be real, consumers just want more data for less moneys. Heck browsing was fine on 3G, 4G is pretty much on par with FTC broadband, so 5G won't matter much in the mobile industry, but I can definitely see the gains for other industries.

 

[wiyosaya]

Absolutely, we need and cannot live without 100-5G devices per square meter! /sarcasm

 

[wiyosaya]

Know what would be cool? If they would stop trying to find ways to waste all this potential new bandwidth with things that don't matter. Nobody needs an internet-enabled thermostat, blender or sex toy. Ultra-capitalists never seem to run out of ways to squander a great resource.

Interesting to hear you say this!

 

[Squid Surprise]

No. It wasn't. I wish people would stop parroting this. The *average* life expectancy was low because the infant mortality rate was so high. The fact is that if you survived childhood chances were that you'd live to your 50s/60s. Most Roman emperors died in their 60s-70s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire#Mortality)

50-60 is nowhere near the expected life expectancy in North America (which approaches 80)...And the life expectancy of an emperor was VASTLY different than the life expectancy of the average Roman... and regardless, my point was that lead poisoning had a negligible effect, if any, on this life expectancy...

 

[treetops]

Wow 6x faster then gigablast.

 

[Lionvibez]

5G-enabled smartphones: With 5G, consumers will almost never again need to log on to public Wi-Fi.

umm ya no if you don't want to go through your whole data cap in a matter of minutes you will still be using Wifi.

Always Connected PCs: With the advent of 5G networks, "always connected" PCs will be able to utilize super high speed, low latency connectivity for the next level of cloud services, as well as high-quality video conferencing, interactive gaming and increased productivity due to the flexibility to work anywhere.

Will have to see it to believe it anyone with half a brain that cares about performance will choose a wired connection. The rest will choose wireless if they can't go wired and will deal with jitter and the latency.

 

[bohemond1099]

You do realize entire swaths of the United Sates can't even sustain 4G and entire countries are on 3G or worse right? Not everyone lives in a first or second world big city or tiny country with miniscule GLOCs.

 

[OldBob]

I breathlessly await this opportunity to be underwhelmed.

 

[DelJo63]

Will have to see it to believe it anyone with half a brain that cares about performance will choose a wired connection. The rest will choose wireless if they can't go wired and will deal with jitter and the latency.

Yes, when at home or using some hotspot, but the whole point of a mobile devices is MOBILITY, even if just walking about in some metro area or riding across the meadow in an ATV or even horseback.

 

[DelJo63]

- Health risks? The ancient Romans poisoned themselves with lead pipes and went more than a little nuts as a civilization. Let's not repeat their mistake with 5G that damages brains and kills people.

Then OPT out of "smart meters" for your power and gas utilities - - these are FULL WATT rf transmitters, whereas your wifi devices are typically less that 1/2 watt rf.

 

[Joe Blow]

Bottom line, your health takes a back seat to new technology roll outs. Since BIG TECH is owned by the Eugenicists, they could care less if it wrecks your health and leaves you sterilized.

If we're smart, we'll oppose this nonsense.

 

[Ben Myers]

Living in an exurb where 4G is capricious, to say the least, I am not holding my breath for a 5G rollout around here. This article does not explain what 5G is or how it will actually work. In fact, there are no coherent explanations of what a 5G-enabled world look like, where the transmission gear is, etc. I am assuming, like any sane person, that if 5G ever becomes real here, I will need to get a new cell phone to use it, and, at minimum, upgrade all of my laptops.

To summarize 5G to date, it is a whole steaming pile of hype, trying to condition the masses to run out and get all new 5G equipment when it becomes available. TechSpot is drunk on 5G Koolaid!