Jeff, I join the many Brownstone Unlimited customers who am very glad to see you and The Outer Limits back in my inbox every day. There is no technology writer who does it as well as you. Keep it coming! You were, and perhaps still are, very enthusiastic about 5G. I seem to not hear much about it anymore. Has it lived up to your expectations? Is it being used in the ways you envisioned? Has it faded into the realm of "old" tech? Thanks! — Ken J.
Thanks Ken,
I really appreciate your compliments. I may make it look easy, but I assure you, it only comes from an incredible amount of work and research behind the scenes. I enjoy it, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. And my subscribers like you are my motivation to keep going.
I was actually thinking about this same thing the other day when I was researching 6G wireless technology.
Yep, there is actually a ton of work that is already happening on 6G right now. It’s early work, but industry players are already working on defining what 6G will be and standardizing the technology.
It’s a complex process with a lot of politics and it takes years to complete. We’ll start seeing early testing of 6G technology in a few years’ time around 2027-2028.
But no, 5G isn’t old tech at all. It’s the most advanced wireless tech that is being deployed today at scale. Believe it or not, 5G networks are still being built out. I’ve noticed that coverage is extensive in major metropolitan areas, and smaller towns and cities are experiencing upgrades to the higher frequency band 5G, which means higher performance.
And yes, 5G is still impressive. It may be hard to see, but the “killer app” of 5G is more bandwidth, lower latency, and higher speeds. It’s very normal now to live in an area where we can experience 1 Gbps speeds and almost no latency on 5G. It’s pretty awesome, and far more performance than most of us need.
Multi-player mobile gaming has definitely improved as a result of 5G because of the technical performance. That’s also true for any kind of multimedia application that streams any kind of video as well.
Augmented reality, while still in early stages, will also be a beneficiary of 5G technology deployment.
And now that more than 50% of devices in most developed countries are 5G-enabled, we’ll see more and more applications that utilize the technical capabilities of 5G networks. There’s a lot more to come over the next 3-4 years.
