So in an earlier post I shared my thoughts on 5G. I thought what I should do is give you a bit of primer on the current tech used in the wireless industry. It should help pull things together and help understand why 5G is necessary and important too.
I’m not going to give a bunch of charts and mathematical equations… don’t worry. Remember I’m not overly technical myself.
Let’s start.
Your current use for wireless technology is probably your phone. Right now its the most common use for wireless technology globally. Right now your phone makes use of two different wireless technologies every day.
3G
All of your voice traffic travels over the older 3G network. When it was designed voice was still the biggest thing people wanted from their phones. Smartphones were still very new and what they could do was somewhat limited. Email and SMS were mostly it.
Data was second fiddle in 3G. It’s there but it’s slow and voice takes priority over data so things like full time connections, and Netflix and You Tube videos… 3G just wasn’t ready for it.
4G LTE
This is where Data got it’s big break. The biggest change here is LTE networks are Data only. That’s right only data moves on this highway. Boy does it move… and fast. LTE networks are faster then many home networks these days.
If you are in Canada you probably have a connection speed of around 30 to 50 Megabits per second in your house. If you have an LTE capable cell phone you could have speeds up to about 800 Megabits per second in your pocket!
Why do we need this?
For two reasons. Streaming Video makes up a huge portion of internet traffic today. If you want to see it on your phone you need a fast connection.
Another reason for giving your phone such a fast connection? Capacity.
You remember when I told you that capacity was an important improvement in 5G? You probably thought… Why do I care about that? As a consumer you probably don’t. As a wireless provider… You do… you constantly do!
The speed at which a user receives data is limited by the networks capacity. Capacity is limited by the amount of wireless spectrum that a network provider has. The more the better. The major limiting factor here is that wireless spectrum is a finite resource and getting it is very expensive.
Ok lets keep things simple… remember I promised
The reason your 3G phone was so bad at data was because it could only access 2 lanes of the road. One lane for your voice and one lane for your data. One lane was always reserved for voice. There was no way to increase the number of lanes or for traffic to share lanes. Since 3G was designed for voice those lanes were pretty narrow too.
In 4G LTE there is no voice lane. Data gets the whole road.
Also a 4G LTE phone can receive data from multiple lanes at the same time. Most current phones support up to 4 lanes. Some even 5!.
Of course your provider has to have the ability to give you those lanes… Capacity!
Each lane you are given requires additional spectrum from your provider. If they don’t have it. You can’t get it. If too many other people are already using it. You can’t get it.
Okay so you are probably asking yourself. If capacity is such a problem and I take up a a lot of space with my new super-fast smartphone why give me the speed in the first place?
It’s simple really. Think of it like a drive through. If I can get your data and serve it to you really fast then I can get you off of my network quicker and serve the next guy in line! But you didn’t think of that?
Let’s stop here for today and pick up this discussion tomorrow.
NoShade's 