5G Mobile – The Hype and Reality

I have been confused by all the noise regarding the new 5G mobile (cell) communications systems that are being introduced.  There seemed to be so many different and conflicting messages (and hype) about the technology, I thought it was time to try to understand what is going on?  I share my findings below.

---

What is 5G?  It is a service that potentially provides faster mobile cell phone and tablet network speeds from the carrier of your choice.  Now what I learned from reading about 5G is that there are three levels of service being made available.  

1. Millimeter-wave (mmWave) signal from Verizon (5G UWB) and AT&T (5G Plus) that potentially can go to 1Gbps in speed.  But in the real world, this high-speed signal "struggles when covering distances, penetrating buildings, glass and even leaves along with issues with device heating.

2. Mid-band which is slower than mmWave but provides more coverage.  The issue here is that this level currently shares frequencies used by the military.  So, there is an upcoming FCC auction in 2020 to make more bandwidth available.  T-Mobile and AT&T simply call their mid-band service 5G while Sprint calls their service “True Mobile 5G”. 

3. Low-band 5G which is what T-Mobile launched on December 6, 2019, that is similar in speed to the current 4G (LTE) networks.   

5G phones will have new communication infrastructure and chips for your phone from Qualcomm (Snapdragon 865) and others.  See a list of possible investment opportunities from this article on Investor’s Business Daily at https://www.investors.com/news/technology/5g-stocks-5g-wireless-stocks/

And what would 5G be useful for?  An article about the former Nokia headquarters city of Oulu, Finland which has been a 5G test site reports that it is good for Virtual Reality games and possibly health monitoring.  There are also promising reports about 5G reduced latency response helping with self-driving car testing.  But if the signal only goes a few city blocks? 

So, for me looking at how this might impact courts, right now I don’t see any real benefits? Instead, it seems like the higher speed WiFi6 (802.11ax) might be a better bet for spending your court's time and budget on in 2020. 

Last, PC Magazine is tracking the roll-out of the 5G tech in the USA here.  Which is currently easy for them since there are so few examples in operation.

But I can be wrong.  Please tell me what I might be missing in the comments section below?