As modern technology progresses, so has the human capacity for impatience. No more is 3G and 4G enough to satiate the needs of the modern-day millennial. Enter 5G.
5G networks promise increased wireless capacity and speed (Opera)
LTE speeds are pretty fast already, so why would we need 5G? Well, 4G’s speed extends up to 30 to 40 megabits. But 5G will take it to Gigabit level awesomeness. Nowadays, smartphones, smartwatches, smart home appliances, streaming and other such connected devices need more reliable and faster means of communication and data transfer. There are currently Gigabytes worth of information that we probably carry from day to day, across multiple synced devices. With 5G, it’ll all be synced in such a fast speed, that it’ll be as if we’re accessing our files on a local drive.
We should be expecting the power of 5G somewhere near 2020, or just in time for a soft launch at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Verizon currently wants to be the first to launch 5G in the States and as is the trend, AT&T and T-Mobile will follow suit. In fact, these carriers have already started testing for the networks and their speed. So the road to progress isn’t that far ahead.
Now bearing in mind that although 4G connections are available, they aren’t exactly the most reliable. Networks often get cut off depending on the area and frankly speaking, in a place like India, getting LTE coverage probably happens by sheer luck. That probably also happens because of the wide number of users that the entire network has to support and thus the distribution of the services fall a bit short. We should be expecting the same for 5G too. Since at the speeds at which transfers would happen, it would require users to stay as close to the signalling tower as possible.
But it’s expected that 5G connections should be transmitted across two bands – 28GHz and 15GHz. In some trials made in Japan, they were able to transmit a 4Gbps network across a 70GHz band. So the exact specifics should vary in the final stages.
It won’t be perfect just yet, but just as 3G and 4G are gaining a strong presence throughout the world, the same should go for 5G as well. Not to say that 4G isn’t enough by itself already, but 5G will better facilitate heavy networking and connecting for users who’ll require higher bandwidths for transfer of information. 5G is touted to be 1200 times faster than 4G. So we can expect more than blazing fast connections.
This means that 4K, 8K and 360-degree videos will load in an instant. And we thought downloading 1080p content was fast as it is. Well, this is not even the network speed’s final form.