5G is the 5th generation of mobile networks, a significant evolution of todays 4G LTE networks. 5G has been designed to meet the very large growth in data and connectivity of today’s modern society, the internet of things with billions of connected devices, and tomorrow’s innovations. 5G will initially operate in conjunction with existing 4G networks before evolving to fully standalone networks in subsequent releases and coverage expansions.
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It is a capital improvement project the size of the entire planet, replacing one wireless architecture created this century with another one that aims to lower energy consumption and maintenance costs. It’s also a huge gamble on the future of transmission technology, doubling down on consumers’ willingness to upgrade.
Last September, consumers began to see the first service bundles offered by telecommunications companies in their area, marketed with some form of the term “5G.” “5G is here,” declared Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, specifically for cities such as Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis where rival AT&T had already been drumming up excitement around its 5G trials.
It was a bit like SpaceX’s 2016 announcement, its 2017 announcement, and its 2018 announcement that the race to Mars had begun.
5G Wireless technology is an explicit set of technologies specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as “Release 15” and “Release 16.” 3GPP is an organization consisting of essentially all the world’s telecommunications standards bodies who agreed to share the definition of 3G Wireless, and to move on from there to next-generation networks. Today, 3GPP specifies which technologies constitute 5G Wireless and, by exclusion, which do not.
The 5G Wireless standard aims to be global — which is the hard part, because each participating country (e.g., China, Russia, South Korea) or amalgamated body of countries (e.g., the EU, the UN) will maintain its own definition of 5G networks, its own concepts of 5G speeds, and its own regulations for where 5G transmissions may take place. In November 2018, the US Federal Communications Commission began an auction for exclusive segments of spectrum in the 28 GHz band, soon to be followed by bids in the 24 GHz band, for exclusive use by the winning bidders. The following month, the FCC unanimously approved a plan to make more spectrum in the 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands available for the highest-speed communications tier for 5G Wireless, called millimeter-wave (mmWave).
But a good part of the 5G plan involves multiple, simultaneous antennas, some of which utilize spectrum that telcos agree to share with one another (for instance, the 3.5 GHz band in the US) as well as unlicensed spectrum that regulators such as the FCC keep open for everyone at all times (areas between 5 GHz and 7 GHz, and 57 GHz to 71 GHz). Among the technologies inside the 5G umbrella are systems enabling transmitters and receivers to arbitrate access to unused channels in the unlicensed spectrum, much the way 802.11ac Wi-Fi devices do now.
