The Blurring Lines of 5G
On the eve of the world’s largest trade show dedicated to all things telecom—Mobile World Congress (MWC), which will be held next week in beautiful Barcelona, Spain—everyone is extraordinarily focused on the next big industry transition: the move to 5G.
The interest and excitement about this critical new network standard is palpable. After years of hypothetical discussions, we’re finally starting to see practical test results, helped along by companies like National Instruments, being discussed, and realistic timelines being revealed by major chip suppliers like Qualcomm and Intel, phone makers like Samsung, network equipment providers like Ericsson, as well as the major carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon.
To be clear, we won’t be seeing the unveiling of smartphones with 5G modems that we can actually purchase, and the mobile networks necessary to support them until around next year’s show—and even those will be more bleeding edge examples—but we’ve clearly moved past the “I’m pretty sure we’re going to make it” stage to the “let’s start making plans” stage. That’s a big step for everyone involved.
As with the transition from 2G to 3G and 3G to 4G, there’s no question that the move to 5G is also a big moment. These industry transitions only occur about once a decade, so they are important demarcations, particularly in an industry that moves as fast as the tech industry does.
The transition to 5G will not only bring faster network connection speeds—as most everyone expects—but also more reliable connections in a wider variety of places, particularly in dense urban environments. As connectivity has grown to be so crucial for so many devices, the need for consistent connections is arguably even more important than faster speeds, and that consistency is one of the key promises that we’re expecting to see from 5G.
Read More - Tech.pinions |
