5G - Fifth Generation Cellular networks
This is the next comms technology that will come to mobile phones. 1G in 1985 was analogue and allowed voice calls. 2G added data services like texting and picture messages. 3G on smartphones gave us video calling and decent Internet speeds. 4G allowed faster speeds and music and video streaming. 5G will give dramatically increased speeds, some say between 20 to 100 times 4G, but will also cut latency, which is the delay handing web page requests.
5G uses higher frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum which gives high data bandwidth, but the downside will be that the signals won’t travel more than a few thousand feet from their transmitter, and will be absorbed more by buildings, trees etc. There is even the potential for scattering by rain. This means very many more base stations will be needed, probably one or two per street in towns. 5G will be impractical for rural areas, motorways, trains etc. It will need smaller antennae so could become the comms tech of choice for autonomous cars and “Internet of Things” connected devices.
5G is already here, and Switzerland’s Swisscom have launched a service. The big carriers like Verizon in the US have trials underway, and the UK’s main operators have trials underway or planned. The Chinese tech company Huawei is a big player in this market, although as you will have read there are concerns about national security. 2020 is when 5G will start to appear in consumer devices, but urban infrastructure rollout could take to 2025.
Will 5G mean WiFi in hotels become redundant? Very unlikely. It’s a licensed spectrum so hotels couldn’t reserve bandwidth for guests only, so signal strength will depend on the number of users in a given area. A coach of people passing by a hotel, or stationary traffic on a nearby road could swamp the local transmitter and leave little for guests in the hotel. It may make more sense for hotels to offer to site a 5G transmitter on the roof, in the basement or near function rooms to complement existing guest WiFi.
Extra reading:
Comments