At CES 2020, 5G wireless network technology and its potential were the talk of the Las Vegas conference back in early January 2020. The overriding view was that 5G is much more than the next generation of wireless technology–it will be a game changing wireless network technology. 5G stands for fifth-generation cellular wireless.
Essentially, 5G network technology is projected to have greater bandwidth capacity, significantly faster mobile data speeds (around 1Gbps according to Qualcomm’s CEO) and lower latency. It is expected to usher in intelligence cities and to allow vehicle-to-vehicle communications which is critical to self-driving cars.
One CES 2020 speaker described 5G as an use case technology; that it will enhance everything we do, and improve how we live, work and play. 5G is expected to deliver faster download speeds, real-time responses, and enhanced connectivity permitting improved mobile streaming and and gaming experiences. Basically, 5G will herald in new possibilities like smart cities and self-driving cars.
5G Low, Middle, and High Cellular Network Spectrum
With 5G wireless network technology, we should expect to have cable modem like speeds on any 5G enabled wireless device. Yet, the transition is not entirely smooth to 5G. To be clear, there are three major flavors of 5G being developed: low-band, mid-band, and high-band, all of which are incompatible at the moment, and perform very differently from each other.
At the moment, low-band and high-band 5G are incompatible, in that there is no consumer device that can handle both. Low-band 5G operates in frequencies below 1GHz. These are the oldest cellular and TV frequencies. They go great distances, but there aren’t very wide channels available, and many of those channels are being used for 4G. So low-band 5G is slow—it acts and feels like 4G, for now. The low-band 5G channels our carriers are using average around 10MHz in width. AT&T and T-Mobile currently have low-band.
Mid-band 5G is in the 1-10GHz range. That covers most current cellular and Wi-Fi frequencies, as well as frequencies slightly above those. These networks have decent range from their towers—often about half a mile—so in most other countries, these are the workhorse networks carrying most 5G traffic. In the US, only Sprint has the available spectrum for this approach.
High-band 5G, or millimeter-wave, is the really new stuff. So far, this is mostly airwaves in the 20-100GHz range. These airwaves haven’t been used for consumer applications before. They’re very short range; our tests have shown about 800-foot distances from towers. But there’s vast amounts of unused spectrum up there, which means very fast speeds using up to 800MHz at a time. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are all using at least some high-band.
5G is projected to offer connectivity speeds 100 times faster and five times more responsive than existing 4G LTE networks. It is expected to allow your internet of things (IoT) devices to work in near real time. It will give consumers more access to entertainment, on-line sports betting, health and wellness related information and potentially solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, such as climate change.
The 5G infrastructure market is projected to grow at an annual rate of 67% over the next 10 years, the entire market is expected to go from $780 million today to nearly $48 billion by 2030.
Major US Carriers Develop 5G Wireless Network
5G is an investment for the next decade with major 5G applications expected to crop up around 2021 or 2022. But a standard doesn’t mean that all 5G will work the same—or that we even know what applications 5G will enable. There will be slow but responsive 5G, and fast 5G with limited coverage.
AT&T is developing two categories of 5G wireless network technologies, 5G and 5G+, according to AT&T’s Alicia Abella, Ph.D, Vice President Integrated Systems Engineering and Realization, AT&T Labs. There is 5G+, which is a high-band spectrum service designed to provide high speeds and extra capacity, especially in dense urban area. While 5G is for low-band spectrum services and provides broader coverage.
- ‘Use case’ is a term that describes how a user uses a system to accomplish a particular goal.
- https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-is-5g
- Alicia Abella, Ph.D, AT&T, “Future of Connectivity: 5G and More”, CES 2020, January 8, 2020.
- https://investorplace.com/2020/02/7-exciting-stocks-to-buy-for-aggressive-investors/
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/tmobile/2019/12/03/5-things-businesses-misunderstand-about-5g—and-what-they-really-mean/#d2d079f1dea6