What 5G means for you
The Mobile World Congress begins Monday in Barcelona, Spain. The agenda for the first day: 5G.
It’s still an emerging technology, but it’s got everyone excited because of what it promises. You can download movies in seconds, play your GIFs in milliseconds, and power the Internet of Things.
Even the FCC is excited: they announced late last year they they want to plan for 5G cellular networks.
“This is one of the most exciting things, in my mind, that the FCC has done in a while,” says Ted Rappaport, director of NYU WIRELESS, and a professor at New York University’s polytechnic school of engineering. “They have issued a notice of inquiry about how we could we use a vast new spectrum resource that has never been used before for mobile.”
If this happens, says Rappaport, cell phone frequency will at least increase to ten times of what it is now: “Going from 2 or 3 gigahertz to 28 or 38 or 60 or 72 gigahertz.”
Those speeds would bring “enormous” bandwidth, he adds.
“Billions of dollars are being spent on the research and development for this 5G millimeter wave future,” says Rappaport.
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