5G is coming, and it’s going to have a massive impact on almost every facet of how we use technology, with faster speeds and lower latency theoretically opening up huge new frontiers in everything from smartphones to self-driving cars.
But the future of mobile networks isn’t here yet. And with something as complex as 5G, dozens of companies, carriers, and device manufacturers all need to work together for this kind of rollout to happen. Here’s where everything stands right now, though:
We’re still in the early days of 5G, and news will accelerate as we get closer to networks rolling out and hardware releasing that support it. We’ll continue to update this post with all the new details, so check back often.
What is 5G?
On a basic level, 5G is the fifth generation of cellular networking. It’s what comes after our current 4G / LTE networks, much in the same way that LTE was a radical shift forward from 3G. Think of how much the way we used and interacted with our phones shifted when 3G data was first introduced, or how things changed again when high-speed LTE data came around. That’s the kind of change we’re looking at with 5G.
But on a more technical level, “5G” is an agreed upon set of standards defined by the International Telecommunication Union (the ITU) and the 3GPP, who work together with hardware companies and carriers to define what exactly a 5G network actually is.
And over the past few months, we’ve actually reached two general definitions for those: the non-standalone 5G New Radio network, which (as the name implies) is built off of existing LTE networks and hardware, and standalone 5G NR networks, which allows for new deployments of 5G in places that didn’t necessarily have that existing infrastructure.
The non-standalone standard was finished in December 2017, while the standalone standard was finalized in June 2018. Having extra time to work on it and being built on existing infrastructure means that when we do see the first real 5G networks start to roll out in 2019, they’ll likely be based on that first.
From a technical perspective, what makes a 5G network a 5G network is a little more complex than just “it’s faster.” There’s a variety of pieces toward reaching those speeds — use of technologies like carrier aggregation, multiple antenna arrays (MIMO and Massive MIMO, new, higher frequency spectrum bands, and of course, the most talked about aspect: millimeter wave frequencies, which are dramatically higher than the ones that we currently use for cellular data and can offer much faster speeds, but have a far shorter range and ability to pass through walls and buildings.
What all this means is that the 5G specification provides goalposts for carriers to reach with their networks, and a set of standardized technologies and tools to get there. How it reaches you — the consumers — is up to the carriers on how they’ll be implementing 5G, and which of these various technologies and spectrum bands they’ll be using to do it.
Carriers
That brings us to the most important part of the state of 5G: what the major carriers are actually doing to bring about these next-gen networks. Here’s where everyone stands.
AT&T: AT&T started off its 5G network on the wrong foot with its “5G Evolution” network in 2017 — which wasn’t actually 5G at all, despite the name. But the company did promise in January to roll out real, 3GPP-standard based 5G in a dozen markets by the end of 2018.
So far, AT&T has announced six of the 12: Dallas, Atlanta, Waco, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Oklahoma City. There aren’t a lot of details on what parts of the spectrum AT&T is planning to use beyond the fact that it will utilize both “mmWave to provide mobile 5G first,” followed by additional spectrum bands in the future.
Verizon: Verizon is working on a different angle than most with its 5G rollout, focusing first on a broadband service launching in Indianapolis, Houston, Sacramento, and Los Angeles in 2018, before following that up with a mobile 5G service in 2019.
That gives Verizon an edge in some areas — barring any issues, it’ll be the first 5G service to launch. But the real prize is true mobile 5G, for which Verizon hasn’t shared as much of its plans yet.
That said, Verizon has already announced at least one phone that will work with its mobile 5G network when it does launch: the Motorola Moto Z3, which will get a 5G Moto Mod accessory sometime next year.
T-Mobile: T-Mobile first announced plans in 2017 to begin rolling out its 5G network in 2019, with a full nationwide rollout by 2020. As of February of this year, though, the company has accelerated those plans: it’s already starting to develop its 5G network this year, and plans to be in 30 cities by the end of 2018, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Las Vegas. The company also recently signed a $3.5 billion deal with Nokia to provide 5G technology, software, and services as it works to build out that network.
From a technological perspective, T-Mobile is planning on utilizing both its 600 MHz chunk of low-band spectrum and 28 GHz millimeter wave portions of the spectrum for its 5G network.
As a separate note: T-Mobile and Sprint are currently in the process of trying to merge, and a big reason the two companies are claiming to do so is that together, they’d be better equipped to create a 5G network. It sounds like a good idea on paper, but neither company has provided a whole lot of detail as to what the benefits of that would be relative to competing in an open market instead to drive innovation, and they are instead more focused on appealing to a specific mindset of individuals who believe that countries like China, Japan, or South Korea are out to defeat the US when it comes to 5G networking.
Sprint: Sprint is also working on its own 5G network, targeting the an early 2019 date as almost every other carrier. Sprint is targeting the 2.5GHz band of spectrum for its network, and it has already started building out Massive MIMO antennas — technology that serves as a precursor to 5G that can be upgraded later on. Its first 5G markets are set to be New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Kansas City and Washington, D.C.
Sprint has also made the most noise about actual consumer 5G hardware, promising a 5G phone with LG in the first half of next year and 5G PCs with Intel. All these plans may change though, depending on how the T-Mobile merger shakes out.
Hardware:
When it comes to actual phones with 5G, we’re still pretty early in the game. Most companies are focused on releasing phones that you’ll be able to buy this year, but there are a few developments on the 5G front already — and we’ll likely start to hear even more in 2019 at events like CES and Mobile World Congress at the beginning of next year, so check back here soon for more updates.
Qualcomm: Qualcomm doesn’t actually make phones, but it’s a hugely important piece of the 5G puzzle, given that the company provides modem and processor chipsets for a massive chunk of the market. To that end, the company is already working on its Snapdragon X50 Modem for 5G, with major companies like Nokia / HMD, Sony, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, HTC, LG, Asus, ZTE, Sharp, and Fujitsu all on board.
Additionally, Qualcomm recently announced its QTM052 mmWave antennas specifically for phones, which could be a key part of getting ultra-fast 5G internet on our mobile devices.
Intel: Intel has struggled of late as it comes to making headway in the mobile market — most prominently, the company’s modems appear in some iPhone models (and possibly all of this year’s models) — but they’ve tended to perform worse than their Qualcomm counterparts. But 5G may offer a fresh chance to turn things around, with Intel already announcing its first 5G modem for phones, cars, drones, and other connected devices, along with a partnership with Microsoft, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to build 5G laptops.
Samsung: Samsung also hasn’t announced a 5G phone yet, but it’s got the next best thing: its new Exynos 5100 modem, which Samsung says is fully compatible with the 3GPP’s 5G standard. Included is support for both the sub-6GHz and mmWave portions of the electromagnetic spectrums, as well as legacy networks like, 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE — all in a single chip. Now all we need is a phone that’ll use it.
Huawei: Huawei makes its own processors and modems, and it’s not missing out on 5G, either. The company announced its Balong 5G01 chipset based on the 3GPP standards at MWC earlier this year. And at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, it announced both a 5G-ready Kirin chip for release sometime in 2019, and a 5G smartphone set for June 2019, although there are not a lot of details yet on either of those.
Motorola: Motorola is the closest to having actually announced a 5G phone — sort of. Technically, the Moto Z3 doesn’t support 5G yet, but Motorola is promising that it’ll get support for Verizon’s forthcoming 5G network sometime in early 2019 with a Moto Mod accessory.
LG: LG has announced that it’ll be releasing a 5G phone sometime in the first half of 2019 that will work with Sprint’s network, but that’s about all we’ve got to go on so far. Given that LG was listed as one of Qualcomm’s 5G partners using the chip maker’s Snapdragon X50 5G NR modems, it seems likely it’ll show up in LG’s phone.
Xiaomi: Xiaomi is already starting to tease its upcoming Mi Mix 3 flagship, and product management director Donovan Sung has already confirmed that the bezel-less sliding phone will include 5G support whenever it does launch, despite the fact that there aren’t actually any 5G networks up and running yet. (It’s also not clear what chipset the Mi Mix 3 is using for its 5G support yet, although like LG, Xiaomi is one of the companies that has partnered with Qualcomm).
Apple: Notably missing in all of this is Apple. As one of the world’s preeminent smartphone companies, whatever side of the 5G line Apple ends up on will almost certainly have massive ramifications for the rest of the industry. But for now, the company has remained characteristically tight-lipped as to its 5G plans. But if past history is anything to go by, its likely the Cupertino company will sit the first rounds out, waiting for things like battery life and network support to improve before it enters the 5G fray, much like it did with the iPhone 5 and LTE support the last time around.
Update September 13th, 11:05am: Sprint is planning to launch its 5G network in early 2019 in nine cities, not late 2019 in six cities as this article originally claimed.
Comments
I’m honestly not that excited. Seems more like marketing than anything else. First off, there’s nothing here pertaining to actual speeds. 20 Mbps down? 50 Mbps? What is the minimum? What can we realistically expect?
And even if we can expect something along the lines of 50+ Mbps (which is doubtful), the carriers are just going to continue to play games and prevent users from being able to truly take advantage of those speeds. Youtube and Netflix will continue to be throttled to 480p/720p resolutions (despite the fact that most of us are sporting smartphones with resolutions of 2K or higher), and bandwidth in general will continue to be limited and slowed after you hit your cap. I mean, if you’re not paying for the most expensive "unlimited" plan, most carriers will throttle you anyway during times of "congestion".
5G sounds like it will be great for the carriers from a marketing and publicity standpoint, but I remain skeptical that it’s going to revolutionize internet usage on our mobile devices.
By CoffeePenguin on 09.07.18 11:28am
I rarely see less than 50Mbps on 4G as it is where I am. I’d expect to see a lot higher on 5G. Just ran two different speed test apps (SpeedTest and Fast) and had 106/37.1 and 110/31 Mbps download/upload respectively over cellular on an iPhone X. It is 2AM right now so would drop during the day but from memory it tends to still sit between 60 – 80 Mbps download, if not higher.
I don’t think it’ll revolutionise mobile devices though in the way 3G did.
By Smigit on 09.07.18 12:31pm
Too late to edit but as some have alluded to, I do think it’s a chance to do far more for homes than it will mobile use. If it’s scaled properly to manage congestion, I can see 5G being a big player in replacing connections to residential addresses which will no doubt continue with future iterations.
By Smigit on 09.07.18 1:02pm
Same, my LTE is nearly as fast as my 40mbps home fiber. I don’t even bother to connect to wifi anymore, so I don’t expect much from 5G. It certainly won’t get me to upgrade early.
By ench on 09.07.18 6:10pm
supposedly, they are saying that with 5G, the bottleneck issues won’t be a big thing so in theory those unlimited plans can be properly unlimited and congestion not a factor. Can’t remember who it was saying that, but at the time, they seemed credible enough. Seems pipedreamy, but hopefully it is right.
By whlr on 09.07.18 12:32pm
Not gonna happen – at least not in the US.
By TheGunde on 09.08.18 8:59am
There are really 3 different prongs to 5G – just the first is the typical service you’d get on your cell phone. It is interesting that 3GPP standards for that don’t mention any particular speed (I suppose to avoid disappointment like with 4G), but I’d expect that congestion should be less of a problem, and losing signals in side buildings would be better, especially if they take advantage of some of the lower frequencies.
The second 2 parts of 5G are
- A lower-bandwidth version with super-low latency and reliability (think autonomous car applications)
- A super low energy / bandwidth version (think months to years of connectivity on a button cell)
So, it certainly lays some groundwork for some revolutionary capabilities, but I certainly agree the marketing machine will be in full swing when the carriers finally have something to sell you.
By mmmotors on 09.07.18 5:16pm
It’s not all about throughput. It’s about reach and penetration. Maybe read up on some scientific articles and educate yourself instead of your sounding ignorant.
By MML10022 on 09.07.18 11:20pm
Not excited for it. Would rather have reliable coverage (4-5 bars) everywhere with a min of 50/20 which is still technically 4G LTE. That is all 99% of consumers need for anything they plan on doing mobile and even at home if you hotspot your house (Hell my home Spectrum service up is only 11). Couple those things above with Cricket or T-Mo pricing and a company couldn’t count their money and customers fast enough.
By thatgeekdad on 09.07.18 11:35am
Yeah, biggest problem is dead spots, next is bandwidth cap, speed comes in third.
By Toyoga on 09.07.18 9:32pm
I’m forunate enough to live in a place where I reliably get ~30-40Mb 4G and have enough data allowance to actually make use of it.
Couldn’t care less about 5G. Even 4G wasn’t a big deal in Europe where near-max HSPA+ speeds were actually realistic. What would I ever use even more bandwidth for? I’m not running a server on my phone…
The first generation of 4G phones
By Tuff on 09.07.18 11:54am
Streaming 4K video? Or ditching expensive cable and running your home internet from a hotspot on your phone? (I already do the latter by the way, with my uncapped 4G data for 15€ a month. It’s pretty sweet, 5G will be even better)
By BlackToe on 09.07.18 12:37pm
Adding to the confusion is that the Galaxy s9’s already have antennas capable of picking up some of the less exotic "5G" frequencies and will be compatible when Sprint flips the switch on all the new towers they’ve built in the last year that already have the required hardware.
By BlueShirt11 on 09.07.18 12:02pm
I think most people are missing the latency advantages for this, and the fact that is isn’t just for mobile. Surely there will be a bandwidth increase but 4G is good enough for almost everything as far as that. The real killer for speed on loading webpages and apps on phones is latency. A webpage load has many requests and each one is getting over 10x the latency that one would have on WiFi when on LTE. That slows things a lot.
Also the big thing stopping ISPs from launching is the astronomical cost of wiring every house. Soon there will be no wires to homes as very high frequency points will be on every block connecting directly to everyone in the area. It is much cheaper to wire to 1000 points in a city than 100,000. So "5G" will help greatly there.
By specialp on 09.07.18 12:50pm
Actually this thread really shows the poor quality of marketing and understanding of what 5G means to the public. What 5G means is low latency close to gigabit Internet wirelessly that can compete with the likes of ISP’s Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Google Fiber. This is the opportunity to actually bring real broadband Internet to rural areas that none of these companies will serve due to the investment on return being too low. We would actually have proper competition across all media platforms instead of having one ISP or cable provider. In my opinion the real reason ISP’s want net neutrality repealed was it would give them the opportunity to tier the Internet into two categories. There would be pure commercial use such as self driving cars and public use such as our everyday Internet access to entertainment. But we all know that corporations will find a way to muck everything up.
By Sandwichman on 09.07.18 1:08pm
Yah maybe if you live under a tower
By Darthdearth on 09.07.18 2:47pm
It would be nice to see more competition, but don’t forget that Comcast got in to the cellular melee when it bought a chunk of spectrum for itself and launched a cell network. I’d rather keep my wired connection to my house as it doesn’t suffer rain fade and can’t be jammed, but those will be a thing of the past in the coming years.
By kickmyjiminy on 09.07.18 5:33pm
Honestly, the speed of 4G is not the problem. My Dad is forced to use 4G connectivity as his "home ISP" because there are no landline. The speeds and even the latency is good enough for what most people do (everything except maybe gaming, but maybe even that).
The problem is that 4G doesn’t have the capacity to scale and provide those speeds in more densely populated areas (my Dad lives on a mountain). So, 5G may allow the wireless companies to start competing with established hardwired ISPs in urban markets which still has huge positive implications for consumers. That said, the other problem with 4G (and all wireless) is the ridiculous data cap/throttling issue. If they can’t move away from that then they will be doomed as far as home ISP replacement goes, and of course if they do open up the data caps for home use then the question will be "hey what is your excuse for capping mobile usage now".
I’m also not sure 5G will do any more than 4G to bring high speed data to rural areas. It doesn’t travel much if any further than 4G signals so the telcos would still have to build out more towers and infrastructure to service a relatively small population. Yes it is cheaper to build a tower than run wire to a number of houses but it likely won’t make the top of the bean counters priority list when it comes to cost/benefit analysis.
By shabanga on 09.07.18 10:49pm
5G isn’t going run Fiber networks out of business. Do you honestly think that the full capabilities will be available to the public? These carriers are going to hinder this in every way no matter what.
By Reed Kochel (Metadragon142) on 09.08.18 11:55am
I’m personally way more interested in home based 5G broadband than the mobile counterparts. When I was house shopping I wanted to live farther out of town but high speed internet is a requirement for our home for work which limited my radius. 5G could allow quite the expansion of fast internet into the country
By youareme7 on 09.07.18 3:06pm
Will it though? I’m sure the towers that need to be built and/or upgraded to service lower population areas will be lower priority. Also they will have to figure out how to provide home users unlimited, unthrottled data without also opening that up for wireless users because honestly what’s the difference?
By shabanga on 09.07.18 10:52pm
What good is 5G when unlimited data is so limited (to about 22-23 Gb per month)
By drrjv on 09.07.18 3:12pm
For mobile usage, data speeds are nice, but if data caps don’t increase, then speeds won’t really matter.
5G speeds will enable one to download a 2 hour movie at 1080p resolution within 30 seconds, but with a file size averaging 25 GB, you would instantly blow past the average data cap (5-10 GB) given to an average user in a month.
Even for those with unlimited data, there is generally a clause in there that will limit the amount of "high speed internet" downloads to a certain amount, before they throttle you down to snail-internet.
I think latency will be a huge deal in the robotics and electronic hardware sector, where we are likely to see some pretty amazing stuff (fully autonomous drones, cars gates etc), but even more interesting, will be the miniaturization of certain computer components.
With latency being low enough, we may be able to replace cables with wireless 5G technology for certain aspects, rendering tasks like high powered wireless VR, wireless gloves and even wireless desktops a reality.
By Buggy3D on 09.07.18 4:15pm
Any "fully autonomous" drone wouldn’t need a low latency connection to the internet. In fact it wouldn’t need a connection at all.
By clamor on 09.07.18 5:53pm
A fully autonomous drone connecting to other drones would though
By Buggy3D on 09.07.18 6:19pm