5G is the next-gen wireless network being steadily rolled out across the country as well as in other countries around the world.
Every country is competing to be the first to deploy a fully functional, nationwide 5G network, and every top company is competing to have the largest or fastest networks because of the many innovations experts anticipate will be built upon it.
However, wireless customers are still going to have to wait for a while to see any major benefits 5G could one day bring. The major differences in setting 4G and 5G apart are faster speeds, better bandwidth, and lower latency between devices and servers. Those perks will require building out a lot of new infrastructure and will need billions of dollars in annual investments.
Capacity
Far too many devices trying to use the network in a place causes congestion as the network infrastructure simply can’t cope with a huge number of devices, causing slower data speeds and longer lag time for downloads. 5G might be able to solve that issue, with the next generation network expected to have significantly more capacity than regular 4G.
Speed
5G is also forecasted to be around 100 times faster than 4G and with crazy speeds like that, you could be downloading a two-hour film in fewer than 10 seconds, which would take about seven minutes on 4G. These speeds have the usual consumer applications, like movie streaming and app downloads, but they’ll also be important in other, no-consumer settings like putting video cameras throughout a factory, quickly gathering and analyzing large amounts of footage to monitor product quality in real-time, and more.
Latency
Latency is described as the time between you sending a text to a friend’s phone and their phone registering that it has received a new message. Though latency is measured in milliseconds, they add up considerably when sending and receiving large packets of information for something as complex as videos.
Reliability
While massive speeds, capacity and the low latency of 5G rely on the high-band spectrum, it isn’t very reliable in small coverage areas. Even in cities where carriers have deployed 5G, it can be hard to stay connected to the network.