Today’s tech news is dripping with 5G news, about this hardware or that hardware being delayed and who is getting 5G first in their handset, etc.
Well, let’s break some of this down and dig a little deeper, which then I bet you will agree that 5G is really not that big of a deal for the majority of mobile users.
So, what is 5G? Well, it’s the 5th Generation of wireless standards, as ratified by the ITU-R. Wait a second, the what ratified by who? The International Telecommunication Union, or ITU, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and has been responsible for telecommunications standards since 1934, but not to be confused with the International Telegraph Union (ITU) of 1865, which is the historical parent of the modern ITU.
What about that R? Well, ITU-R stands for the ITU Radiocommunication Sector, which is the modern revision of the International Radio Consultative Committee created in 1927. The ITU-R is a Specialized Agency within the United Nations that is responsible for managing radio spectrum and wireless standards globally. They even have a hand in assigning satellite orbits to companies and countries.
So now that that is out of the way, back to 5G. Currently, we run on a wireless standard known as 4G LTE, or 4th Generation wireless, Long-Term Evolution. Remember the “old” 3G? That was 3rd Generation wireless, so we’re going into the second generation beyond that technology that fueled the mobility revolution.
So, why 5G? Well, innovation never stops, and the quest for bigger, faster, “better” is part of the human condition, which is where 5G comes from, and in the past 4G LTE. It’s meant to solve a problem that most folks don’t even realize they have to be honest. Backing up a second, there’s some marketing out there talking about 4G LTE-A, 4G LTE-Advanced, and 5Ge, which really isn’t confusing at all. Let’s poke around here before going deeper.
4G is actually a higher standard than 4G LTE, calling for higher transmission rates than the LTE marketing speak. Then we have this 4G LTE-A, 5Ge, and LTE-Advanced stuff, which, hold on to your butts, its just true 4G (not LTE crap). The marketing folks didn’t think that it would look “better” to drop the LTE for the “better” hardware, so they came up with those three very confusing terms. Thank you marketing wanks for that!
So, today every handset made uses the 4G LTE technology, with some adding support for the newer “true” 4G technologies. Coming to a store near you to lighten your bank account, 5G capable phones and tablets! But should you upgrade?
Well, starting to dive deeper, 4G LTE is the current standard, and even newer 5G hardware will use 4G LTE towers for some time to come, possibly into 2030 or even 2035. So that iPhone 11 you got last year, or even the Android phone from 2 years ago will have a lot of life in them.
So what’s the difference between 4G LTE and 5G? Well, fundamentally it comes down to spectrum, or radio frequencies that each technology uses. This spectrum determines core items of each technology such as speed, number of users in a given area, distance between the tower and phone, and how easily it is to block or attenuate the signal.
Let’s start with frequency. 4G LTE uses the spectrum between 700 Mhz and 2.5 Ghz, which those who are keen eyed will spot one of the issues with 4G LTE right away. It tends to overlap with Wireless G protocols, which use the 2.4 GHz spectrum itself. Also, those who are really keen will recognize 2.4 GHz as the frequency at which a microwave oven cooks your food. So double whammy there buddy. Additionally, not every carrier is licensed to use all of the spectrum, which is broken up into 100 MHz wide bands that the carriers have to license from the FCC. So a carrier may only have a few bands in which to provide service to all of it’s customers in a given area, which can get really complicated really quick.
For example, Verizon uses the LTE bands of 2, 4, and 13, with the majority of hardware using band 13. This really limits how many folks can be on a given cell tower at a given time, with the average numbers touted as around 100 users per cell tower, per second. Remember, your phone isn’t transmitting or receiving 100% of the time, so that 100 users per second may translate out to 1,000 or 100,000 users in a time period. Granted, the more users wanting to get time on that tower means that a line, or queue starts to build up, and when a user is waiting for their turn in that line to come up, their browser just sits and spins, and this is for each request! Just opening a web page, with all the ads and all the scripting and cookies, may take dozens or hundreds of requests just to open that one new article up.
5G operates at much higher frequencies, in some cases. There’s actually two different spectrum for 5G, the sub-6 GHz FR1 spectrum and the millimeter-wave FR2 spectrum. The first operates between 450 MHz to 6 GHz, and the later operates on the 26, 28, 38, and 60 GHz bands. While the division of the spectrum is into 100 MHz bands for 4G LTE…
Let’s hold again at this layer and point out something about radio frequencies. The higher a frequency goes, the more power is required to generate and transmit that wave, and the more information can be carried. All great, but the higher the frequency, the shorter the range is and the easier it is to block, or attenuate the signal, so you trade speed for distance. So the FR2 spectrum, while able to send a lot of data, 100 GB/sec+, it’s distance will be much shorter than FR1 and objects such as trees, walls, and even rain will block it much easier than FR1 transmissions.
Quick fun fact, when you start to get into the 60 GHz+ frequencies of radio transmission, little things like Oxygen molecules can start to cause interference in the transmission, so don’t expect to see these coming anytime soon to a theater near you.
Oh, for the conspiracy junkies out there, no, FR2 frequencies, especially the 60GHz, does not cause spontaneous nuclear fission and rip Oxygen atoms out of the air, suffocating people. First, go back and learn biology, O2 is but one teeny fraction of the atmosphere we breathe, there’s more N2 and other byproducts. What is going on is the O2, CO2, H2O, etc in the air (Oxygen based molecules) attenuate a 60GHz signal, basically stripping it from the air, not vice versa. If that was the case, we would have spontaneous nuclear fission happening right now as we speak.
So, before going deeper, the FR2, or millimeter-wave bands will not really be practical for mobile usage in the near future, this will be only useful for Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless broadband to home. Instead of running a cable or fiber, 5G can be used to provide broadband service to residences and businesses, just not in rural areas.
Here’s a good graphic from Cablefree.net that breaks down the uses of 5G by bands. You’ll notice that for the most part, we will still be using the 700 MHz bands for mobile, so not going to get much advantage over 4G LTE there.
In fact, 5G and 4G LTE networks share 4G LTE’s frequencies because 5G is not wholly and immediately replacing 4G LTE. A network operator can use frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) technologies to share spectrum. FDD is where different bands of frequency are used by users; one for uplink and the other for downlink. TDD is where one frequency band will be used for uplink and downlink, switching between the two from moment to moment. In the US, we use TDD, not FDD based technologies.
Ok, going deeper, one big difference between 4G LTE and 5G is how low the frequencies go. Remember a few years back how we had to get those special boxes on our TV’s for digital Over the Air (OTA) broadcasts? Well, that was because the FCC was preparing the 450MHz to 600MHz spectrum to be used for some advanced communications technology coming. Well, now we have that technology, it’s called 5G.
What this means is that while a 4G LTE tower can service customers doing low data items, making phone calls for instance, can extend several miles from a given cell tower, using this so called Low Band 5G, that coverage now becomes hundreds of miles around that same tower, with similar to slightly better data rates than the 4G LTE connection. This means that just by adding equipment to existing towers, in most cases, carriers will be able to extend their reach without adding new towers, and improving existing customers experiences. Granted, this will need a phone capable of low band 5G, but those are coming out in late 2020 and early 2021, and as carriers add the new base stations to the existing towers, this becomes a win-win.
The good news though is that you won’t have to decide between getting a 4G LTE capable phone or a low band 5G capable phone, because manufacturers are making modems for phones that are capable of using both at once, and carriers can use both technologies at once. So while you can be further away from a tower and make a call using 5G, you may not get a better experience at running PupG right off the bat, so as with everything, there’s a tradeoff.
In conclusion, the confusing thing about right now is all the marketing wank out there around 4G LTE, 5Ge, 4G, 4G LTE-A, etc, and the sheer expanse of what 5G encompasses. In the end, I wouldn’t even think of stressing right now about upgrading to a 5G capable handset unless you are already in the market for an upgrade, because it will be a few years before carriers in the US will get things upgraded to the point where it will make sense to those of us that don’t live in big cities and never travel outside of those big cities.
