Each of the
four nationwide cell phone carriers, as well as smartphone chipmakers and the
major network equipment companies are working on developing 5G network
technology for their customers.
There are
many significant hurdles that all the industry players have to clear before
you'll see a little 5G symbol next to the signal bars on your smartphone
screen. For example, it has yet to be determined what 5G even means, let alone
what it will look like and when it will get here.
But as
consumers use up rapidly growing amounts of 4G bandwidth watching streaming
videos on their phones, 5G will soon become a necessity. As telecom engineers
work furiously to develop 5G technology, we're getting a clearer picture of the
who, what, where, when and why of 5G.
What is 5G?
The
"G" in 3G, 4G and 5G stands for "generation." So 5G will be
the fifth generation of wireless network technology.
The
standards for 5G have not yet been set. According to Bill Smith, president of AT&T's (T, Tech30)network
operations, 5G will likely be defined in 2018, and the standards for 5G will
codified sometime in 2019 by the standards-setting International
Telecommunication Union, a branch of the United Nations. The standards will
determine which wireless technologies can be called "5G," as well as
what its characteristics must include, such as how fast it will be.
Still, it's
possible to make a very educated guess about what 5G will look like based on
the emerging 5G technologies that the wireless industry is experimenting with.
Here's the
elevator pitch: 5G will be faster, smarter and less power-hungry than 4G,
enabling a slew of new wireless gadgets. 5G will let us have faster
smartphones, more smart-home devices and longer-lasting wearable gizmos.
How fast
will 5G be?
5G has the
potential to offer speeds up to 40 times faster than 4G -- fast enough to
stream "8K" video in 3-D or download a 3-D movie in about 6 seconds
(on 4G, it would take 6 minutes).
Unfortunately
for consumers, there's a difference between lab experiments and reality. Peak
speeds are fun to dream about, but in the real world, actual speeds are much
slower than promised.
Nokia (NOK),
one of the biggest 5G players, believes that its 5G technology will allow for
real-world speeds of about 100 Megabits per second when the network is most
congested -- that's about four times faster than 4G's top speed.
Another
characteristic of 5G is that it will have ultra-low latency, meaning that it
could drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for the network to respond
to your commands. That could give the appearance of much faster loading
websites, apps, videos and messages.
How will it
work?
A lot of
the wireless companies' 5G experimentation is taking place in super-high
frequencies -- as high as 73,000 MHz. Today's cell phone networks broadcast
signal in a range of 700 MHz to 3,500 MHz.
The
advantage of high-frequency signals is that they're capable of providing
significantly faster data speeds. The disadvantage is that they travel much
shorter distances and they can't easily penetrate walls. That means thousands
-- perhaps even millions -- of mini cell towers, or "small cells"
would need to be placed on top of every lamp post, every building, inside every
home and potentially every room.
That
presents a host of problems. How can cell phone companies possibly process all
that data? There are companies, such as Google's recently acquired Alpental,
that are working on those "backhaul" issues. But they're not so close
to a solution, according to Akshay Sharma, wireless infrastructure analyst at
Gartner.
That's why
5G might complement 4G, rather than outright replace it. In buildings and in
crowded areas, 5G might provide a speed boost. But when you're driving down the
highway, 4G could be your only option -- at least for a while.
When is 5G
coming?
None of
these questions are going to be answered any time soon. The industry's
consensus is that it will run 5G experiments in South Korea during the 2018
Winter Olympics, with mass deployments beginning sometime in 2020.
Yet Verizon (VZ, Tech30) has
said that it is working on 5G technology with the aim of bringing it
to market much sooner -- as early as 2017.
With all
the questions surrounding 5G and all the wrinkles that need to be ironed out,
it's exceedingly unlikely that anything Verizon does will be widely deployed.
For example, the smartphone makers will need to develop chips that are capable
of sending and receiving 5G signal without driving costs significantly higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment