5G Technology and Networks

A new mobile generation has appeared approximately every 10 years since the first 1G system, Nordic Mobile Telephone, was introduced in 1982. The first '2G' system was commercially deployed in 1992, and the first 3G system appeared in 2001. 4G systems fully compliant with IMT Advanced were first standardized in 2012. The development of the 2G (GSM) and 3G (IMT-2000 and UMTS) standards took about 10 years from the official start of the R&D projects, and development of 4G systems began in 2001 or 2002. In April 2008, NASA partnered with Machine-to-Machine Intelligence (M2Mi) Corp to develop 5G communication technology.

The "G" in 3G, 4G and 5G stands for "generation." So 5G will be the fifth generation of wireless network technology.

The standards for 5G have not yet been set. According to Bill Smith, president of AT&T's (T, Tech30) network operations, 5G will likely be defined in 2018, and the standards for 5G will codified sometime in 2019 by the standards-setting International Telecommunication Union, a branch of the United Nations. The standards will determine which wireless technologies can be called "5G," as well as what its characteristics must include, such as how fast it will be.

5G has the potential to offer speeds up to 40 times faster than 4G -- fast enough to stream "8K" video in 3-D or download a 3-D movie in about 6 seconds on 4G, it would take 6 minutes.

Nokia, one of the biggest 5G players, believes that its 5G technology will allow for real-world speeds of about 100 Megabits per second when the network is most congested -- that's about four times faster than 4G's top speed.

Another characteristic of 5G is that it will have ultra-low latency, meaning that it could drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for the network to respond to your commands. That could give the appearance of much faster loading websites, apps, videos and messages.

A lot of the wireless companies' 5G experimentation is taking place in super-high frequencies -- as high as 73,000 MHz. Today's cell phone networks broadcast signal in a range of 700 MHz to 3,500 MHz.

The advantage of high-frequency signals is that they're capable of providing significantly faster data speeds. The disadvantage is that they travel much shorter distances and they can't easily penetrate walls. That means thousands -- perhaps even millions -- of mini cell towers, or "small cells" would need to be placed on top of every lamp post, every building, inside every home and potentially every room.

The industry's consensus is that it will run 5G experiments in South Korea during the 2018 Winter Olympics, with mass deployments beginning sometime in 2020.