I can’t open a media stream these days without some telco or vendor hyping up 5G. As a veteran of the mobile industry, this bugs me a lot. Here are a few facts about 5G that I think everyone should keep in mind:
First of all, 5G does not exist. Not only that, nobody knows what the 5G standard will even look like. As a result, the term ‘5G’ is right now being used to denote whatever the marketers & hype-mongers feel like. They can do this with impunity exactly because 5G is totally undocumented. 5G can mean anything you want it to mean.
Yesterday, Verizon announced that they’ll be testing 5G inside of 12 months. I’m sure Verizon can do lots of awesome testing. But what exactly is it that they’re testing since there is no standard for 5G yet? Nobody knows. And here’s the thing: They don’t even know themselves.
What Verizon is saying is this: “The future is going to bring more stuff that I can’t really describe” (says Verizon spokesman Roger Gurnani). Exactly. Verizon is testing stuff they can’t describe. Good luck with that.
It has also been said that 5G is supposed to be 50 times faster than 4G. This begs the question: Where is the spectrum going to come from? Or perhaps 5G will be 32×32 MIMO? Again: Nobody knows. 4G is already pushing the Shannon bounds. Someone will have to come up with either massive MIMO or massive spectrum to hike mobile speeds like that. Either that or just make up some massively misleading statements.
Here’s what I think is closer to the truth: Historically, new mobile standards take 6-8 years to develop and more than 10 years to mature. The chart below is lifted (sorry, Chetan!) from Chetan Sharma consulting here. It’s actually a very good picture of time-to-market for new telco standards:
Finally: When 2020 or 2022 rolls around, I’m not even sure that cellcos will be financially ready for another massive network upgrade let alone another big batch of spectrum licenses. It’s kind of hard to see how flat or falling carrier revenues will support that.
So welcome to another outrageous mobile hype cycle. Don’t let the mobile media machine brainwash you into believing that 5G will follow 4G like night follows day. Personally, I don’t think 5G is likely to happen at the scale we’ve seen for 3G & 4G in the past.
We may know more when we find out what 5G actually is.
Meanwhile – if you ask me what’s the biggest direct threat to 5G right now, I would be compelled to say Wi-Fi. We’ve only just seen the beginnings of massive, aggregated Wi-Fi networks. And the technology to make devices choose correctly between networks is starting to take form.
For more on this don’t miss Wi-Fi NOW in Amsterdam this November – check our program and register here!
/Claus.
I would like to thank Claus for feeling the same than me. I have been shot down and criticised every time I air my opinion about companies hyping about something that does not exist. If it is already there and in the testing phase that I can go and look at it, no problem. LTE for first responders cannot even do, or will in the near future do, what two way radios does, and they hype about it.
Thanks Claus, you are my hero.
Leon
We are heroes, you & I both, Leon! And thanks for your kind comment.
A wise man recently said: “You can’t get a real picture of what’s going on in the world by following the media. You’ve gotta study reality and make up your own mind.” This applies for this industry as well.
Problem is, so few of us do that. The even worse problem is that when people hear something enough times, they will take it to be truth. Sad but true.
/Claus.