The Rise of 5G

posted March 4, 2021, by Andrew Biedron

Unless you’ve truly embraced the pandemic and have entirely shut yourself off from the rest of the world, you’ve probably been hearing about something called 5G networks. 5G (which stands for 5th generation) is the next generation of mobile networks that’s currently being implemented by companies such as Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. For the most part, 5G has already been rolled out, but it’s still being developed in some places. Qualcomm, a major contributor to 5G’s development, says that it’s faster, more reliable, higher capacity, and has increased availability.

With the continued growth of the internet as a whole, the Internet of Things, or IoT (defined by Aeris here), has also been expanding to virtually every aspect of life. Everything you can think of has a “smart” version, meaning it’s connected to the internet. One of the goals of 5G networks is that it will be able to support the IoT much more effectively than 4G can.

5G can do this because of a few significant improvements. The number one reason is the massively increased data speeds; 5G networks are supposedly able to go up to 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps). They can also support a 100 times increase in capacity and efficiency, allowing for way more appliances and things to be on the network without a noticeable drop in bandwidth. The network also utilizes a much wider spectrum of frequencies, which significantly lowers latency and interference.

There are many ideas and studies about what 5G is going to do for the world, which is being called the “5G effect”. While it’s going to take a while for the effect of 5G networks to be fully realized (likely by 2035), economists predict that the networks could enable up to $13.1 trillion in goods and services. For comparison, the CTIA calculated that 4G networks had contributed a total of $690.5 billion in 2019. 5G’s projected contribution is almost 20 times that number. The ability of 5G to support the IoT also allows for expansion into new industries not affected by 4G. As a result of all this, 5G networks alone could create up to 22.8 million new jobs worldwide, and that’s only based on what exists today. In the future, there will likely be even more applications.

The time frame for 5G, as previously mentioned though, is very long. With 5G only being fully implemented by 2035, there is still a lot of work to do before we really know what it’s going to do. In an article by CNN, they say that only half of mobile connections will be 5G; the rest will be older technology. With the history of a new generation of mobile networks coming out every decade, we might not even get to 2035 before 6G is invented.

Overall, 5G is a huge step up in the mobile networking industry, but as always with large technology advancements, there are both good things and bad things about it. If you want to learn more about 5G, you can always visit the websites of data providers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Obviously, they are biased about their own product but you’ll find some good information there if you are interested. The only way to really get a sense about what 5G is going to be is to just wait and see, though hopefully, we don’t have to wait until 2035.