5G EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
The 5G rollout may focus on delivering faster wireless broadband first
As you might have guessed from the name, 5G – the fifth generation of mobile technology – is the successor to 4G. It’s due to start arriving (lightly) this year, and the difference between the abilities of 4G and 5G is stark. On paper, 5G is faster than any currently available Wi-Fi tech, and faster even than any home broadband available anywhere outside South Korea. 4G LTE, the fastest standard currently available in the UK, is around 100 times slower than 5G when considering theoretical lab maximums. That’s huge. It’s also not entirely realistic; in real-world applications, 5G may introduce a 50 times increase in speed, though we’d wager it’ll be less than that when all is said and done.
Those numbers, even if they’re not wholly likely to be what we end up getting, are still impressive, and it’s important to see them in context. They’re easily enough to pull in entertainment content; the BBC requires 2.75Mbps to stream high-definition content from iPlayer,
