We've all heard about 5G in the news, how it's coming, how it will be a huge advance in technology and how it will bring about big changes in how we connect with the world and each other. It sounds so great and it's all the buzz about how it will bring about great changes in our lives. But is this a good thing or another assault on our privacy and health?
When we look at 5G we see that the term means different things depending on the carrier. Verizon has 5G that is very fast with download speeds up to one gigabyte per second. That's an incredible ten times faster than most wi-fi connections. However, the coverage so far is spotty and you can't count on maintaining the fast connection on the street and it's virtually non-existent in the home. Again 5G as it is being used right now can't travel very far and is blocked by walls and foliage so in order to achieve a city-wide roll out there would need to be nodes for coverage on every block. Verizon plans to turn on a low-band 5G network to increase coverage but the speeds won't be much faster than a regular LTE phone used today.
AT&T and T-Mobile's low-band networks are in the 600 megahertz and 850 megahertz bands, effectively the same area of spectrum as existing LTE however, they're new bands of spectrum that aren't already clogged up with existing customers. These use new transmission technologies which means that these low-band 5G networks can offer faster speeds than LTE even though they're basically using the same spectrum bands as LTE. They can transmit over a much wider range than other types of 5G and that's why T-Mobile can claim to have nationwide 5G coverage.
T-Mobile now owns Sprint and these use mid-band 5G located at the 2.5 gigahertz range of the spectrum. This is faster than low-band 5G, about the same area of the electromagnetic spectrum as your home wifi. Midband is higher frequency and more bandwidth than low-band 5G, however it's far slower than millimeter wave, which is the ultra-fast 5G.
What we are calling millimeter wave is at about 30 gigahertz, much higher frequency than any other types of 5G and offers blazing fast speeds. These are being used by Verizon and in limited areas, T-Mobile, and AT&T. These radio waves are between one and 10 millimeters in wavelength and do not pass through objects like walls or buildings easily which means that the range is very limited.
The changes in the usage of bandwidth are interesting but only part of the story. Other improvements in 5G, come from new transmission technology and techniques to improve connectivity. Carrier aggregation combines multiple LTE bands into one data stream for faster speeds, and MIMO antennas, or multiple inputs multiple outputs, use antenna arrays, made up of lots of little antennas stationed at intervals for improved connectivity.
