What is 5G the fifth generation ?

Fifth-generation wireless (5G) is the latest iteration of cellular technology. It is engineered to greatly increase the speed and responsiveness of wireless networks. With 5G, data transmitted over wireless broadband connections could travel at rates as high as 20 Gbps by some estimates — exceeding wireline network speeds — as well as offer latency. of 1 ms or lower for uses that require real-time feedback. 5G will also enable a sharp increase in the amount of data transmitted over wireless systems due to more available bandwidth and advanced antenna technology.

Every one is harping about 5G of late. The people only saw the different presentations from the top technology companies. These Companies simply demonstrate their enterprise offerings.

As the year progressed , we saw the likes of Qualcomm, Intel, Motorola and Ericsson to showcase their 5G products as well.

It was only in July 2018 that the actual 5G standard was finalized by the folks over at 3GPP.

All products featuring 5G till that time were based on the draft standards i.e. milestones in the standardization process but not the actual standards. This did not stop people from lusting after the new G. Folks are already started looking to get 5G on their personal devices and homes.

Where this is not an unreasonable request, you really need to understand if 5G will really make a difference with such applications and use cases.

With each revision to the cellular networking standard the manufacturers make small but notable changes and test out the entire setup to see how it fares. The final 5G standard is poised to bring in quite a few notable improvements.

Depending on which band it is set to , a 5G devide will be able to handle up to 20nGbits/s, that’s like getting a super fast fiber line, except, it’s wireless. Then there’s the reduced power consumption and the reduced latencies as well.

Aside from these two key parameters , 5G radios will also be able to talk to a lot more devices at the same time which makes it excellent for deployment in high-density areas.

These put together make 5G the messiah of high-bandwidth applications such as mass surveiliance, autonomous vehicles , fleet management, Internet of Things, smart cities, high-res and high-quality multiledia trasmission, etc.

One can see why 5G would really turn things around.

Of course , we would like to have all of the aforementioned niceties, but before we delve into that, how about we explore whether we are making good use of the existing technologies’ full potential. Here, I am talking about us as a country and as people.

None of the existing telecom players in the country have a good 4G network. They all claim to have the best but that’s all on a relative scale and being better that crap isn’t exactly a great achievement to boast.

If you have been to any of the tier 1 cities then you know how bad the situation is. You will experience excellent connectivity at few hotspots peppered across the city but most of the city gets poor coverage. This was when the networks were primarily 3G, the move to 4G has only made things worse as the higher bandwidth is only afforded on higher frequency bands. The very same bands which have poor penetration. Now apply the same train of thought to when 5G becomes a reality.

If you are on the sub-g GHz band, things will be slightly worse that it is right now and if you happen to be on the mmwave band, then i would rather not get into how bad it will be.

The only way to overcome this problem of poor penetration is by increasing the density of signal towers and that’s not going to be good for living beings.

Dr. L. Hardell , Professor of Oncology states : “The telecom industry is trying to roll out technology that may have very real, unintended harmful consequences. Scientific studies, both recently and over many years , have identified harmful effects on health when testing wireless products under realistic conditions. We are very concerned that the increase in radiation exposure by 5G leads to damange that cannot be reversed.”

We still don’t have long term studies about the effects of electromagnetic radio waves on human bodies or animals for that matter. All we know is that EMF has a negative effect when the exposure occurs in close proximity.

Some of the biggest telecom providers have expressed no interest in deploying 5G in the country.

Only Jio has promised to launch 5G services within six months of the spectrum being auctioned. So we are going to see the first 5G ready telecom sometimes in mid-2020 or later.

So every 5G ready device that will be launched this year will be relegated to 4G for the foreseeable future despite the heavy price premius they’ll command.