5G speed is on its way

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett
For those people who don’t think their phone network is fast enough, 5G is on its way – and it’s blazing fast. However, it might not be available for us to use until around 2020.
Researchers at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom have announced progress on 5G technology and said the network will be capable of speeds around one terabyte per second (Tbps), which is thousands of times faster than average 4G speeds.
Rahim Tafazolli, a communications engineers at the university’s 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC), recently told the UK tech site V3 that his team has been developing new technologies that have been instrumental in producing the terabyte speed.
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“We have developed 10 more breakthrough technologies and one of them means we can exceed 1Tbps wirelessly,” he said. “This is the same capacity as fiber optics but we are doing it wirelessly.”
In a race against time/nations
The British team achieved their test results on the university campus over distances of just a few hundred feet, and the team is racing to develop their system ahead of South Korean, Russian and Japanese competitors. The UK engineers said they plan to publicly demonstrate a 5G network by 2018.
“We want to be the first in the world to show such high speeds,” Tafazolli said.
He added that his team is particularly focused on both latency and reliability of a 5G network.
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“An important aspect of 5G is how it will support applications in the future,” Tafazolli said. “We don’t know what applications will be in use by 2020, or 2030 or 2040 for that matter, but we know they will be highly sensitive to latency.”
“We need to bring end-to-end latency down to below one millisecond so that it can enable new technologies and applications that would just not be possible with 4G,” he added.
Lowering expectations
British telecom regulator Ofcom has tried to set expectations for an eventual 5G network much lower, publicly stating target speeds of around 50 Gbps; faster than 4G’s average of 15 Mbps, but much slower than 5GIC’s terabyte speeds.
In January, Ofcom’s acting chief executive Steve Unger said: “5G must deliver a further step change in the capacity of wireless networks, over and above that currently being delivered by 4G.”
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While regulators and communications engineers are currently focused on the network of tomorrow, telecoms are still looking to extend the existing technology to more remote corners of the Earth.
Parts of Canada still don’t have 4G LTE tech
Earlier this week, Bell Canada announced it would bring its 4G LTE wireless network to the more distant reaches of Ontario and Quebec. The move will extend the high-speed network to more than 98 percent of Canadians.
“From Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière to Grafton, Pickle Lake to Bromont, customers can now access the same great broadband service and mobile applications as customers in major centres across Canada,” announced Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility.
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To help with the expansion into rural Canada, Bell said it was using the new 700 MHz spectrum, which is said to provide both strong in-building connections and consistent coverage over long distances.
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