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5G: Finally, it’s here in the UK – but so what?

After years of hype – and sometimes confusion – the UK finally has a 5G network.

BT’s EE subsidiary is the first to launch a service – and if you’re feeling wealthy enough and live in the right place, you can sign up.

The lowest-priced deal is £54 a month plus a one-off £170 fee for a compatible handset.

But bear in mind that buys you only 10GB of data a month, which you will be likely to chew through fairly quickly if you take advantage of the next-generation technology to download lots of media.

For many people, it may make sense to wait – and not just to take advantage of rival offers from Vodafone, which starts its own 5G service in about five weeks.

The two operators are launching in select cities only.

And even there, the connectivity will be patchy, sometimes offering only outdoor connectivity, sometimes none at all – so customers will probably default to a slower 4G signal much of the time.

Chip-maker Qualcomm has promised the first 5G phones will offer “all-day battery life” – but second- and third-generation modems will inevitably be more energy-efficient and thus allow handset-makers to offer either longer life between charges or thinner phones.

What’s more, many of the innovations that promise to make 5G truly disruptive have yet to arrive. But more on that in a bit.

How fast will it go?

The communications watchdog Ofcom suggests that in time 5G could offer speeds of 20Gbps.

That is fast enough to download an ultra-high definition 4K movie in less time than it takes to read its description.

But for now, you should temper your expectations.

To start with, the fibre lines EE is using to link each 5G site to its network have a total capacity of only 10Gbps, which must be shared around.

The network has suggested that, on average, users will achieve about 150-200Mbps downloads at launch, with lucky individuals hitting about 1Gbps at quiet times.

So, wait times for such big files will still be measured in minutes rather than seconds.

Even so, this would still be an improvement on the 29.6Mbps that OpenSignal said that EE typically provided via its 4G network.

Of course, there’s another way to measure speed and that is in terms of latency – the lag between sending a command and getting a response.

In time, 5G is supposed to provide latencies of one millisecond or less, compared with the 20-70 milliseconds on offer today.

That will make playing videos games powered by a cloud-based service a more responsive experience and will pave the way for new use cases – such as remote-controlled vehicles, surgical robots, and live-streamed virtual reality.

To start with, however, things won’t be close to that level.

EE says to expect latency of about 20 milliseconds at launch, falling to 10 milliseconds within the next decade.

Is it just about faster phones?

No – though that’s undoubtedly the short-term hook to attract subscribers.

One of the biggest long-term benefits of 5G will be the ability for mobile networks to provide more connections at once.

In theory, 5G will be able to simultaneously support more than a million devices per sq km (0.4 sq miles), a big jump over the 60,000-odd devices that 4G technology maxes out at.

But to make this possible, antennas will be needed all over the place – from lamp-posts to bus shelters, in addition to more of the rooftop masts we’re already used to.

These in turn will support hundreds of thousands of data-capturing sensors that will allow the authorities and businesses to gain deeper insights about behaviour and provide “smarter” services.

Futurists envisage benefits such as a customer’s smart-home automatically ordering the ingredients for meals that have been nutritionally tailored to their activities, while retailers make use of related data to ensure they have the right amount of stock to hand, thus minimising lost sales and goods going to waste.

 

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk