The transition to 5G is getting faster and faster: the number of cities covered by the signal is growing and 4G seems to be already obsolete. Are they really so different?
Slowly but surely, the 5G network is advancing also in Italy. Major operators are installing the new 5G repeaters on the towers that already host 4G ones (in most cases they are mounting them in place of the old 3G repeaters) and already many of the major Italian cities have some areas covered.
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5G is always talked about as the network of wonders, which will bring a real revolution in connectivity by offering incredible data rates and allowing to keep millions and millions of devices connected, simultaneously. And that, consequently, should lend a big hand in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Things in which all objects are connected and talk to each other and to central servers.
But is 5G really that different from the current 4G? What are the strengths of this new technology, and what are the weaknesses? Here are the four main differences between 4G and 5G: speed, latency, capacity and reliability. These are not all the differences between the two standards, there are others as well, but they are the ones that will most affect (for better or worse) the way we connect in the near future.
Speed: 4G Vs 5G
The theoretical maximum speed limit of 4G is 100 Mbit per second in download and 40 Megabit in upload. The 5G in theory is much faster: Tim, for example, affirms that its 5G network will reach 2 Gbit per second in download allowing us to download huge amounts of data in a very short time. So much speed will serve, for example, to streaming video in high resolution (and even in 4K) without the need for a wired connection. A two-hour movie, therefore, can be downloaded in ten seconds against the six-seven minutes of a 4G connection.
Capacity: 4G Vs 5G
The capacity of a network means the number of devices that can keep connected, and consequently the number of data streams in download and upload that it can manage, for each square kilometer. 5G has a theoretical capacity ten times higher than 4G: 1 million devices per square kilometer, against 100 thousand. This means that even in crowded places everyone will have a connection. You may argue that a million people won’t even fit in a square kilometer, but you’re forgetting the huge number of IoT devices that will connect to the 5G network.
Latency: 4G Vs 5G
Latency is the time between when a device sends a data request and when it starts receiving it. The lower it is, the better. Already 4G has a very good latency, around 40-50 milliseconds, but 5G reduces it even more: today we are already on 10-15 thousandths of a second, but at the end of the development of 5G networks it will drop to 5-10 thousandths of a second. That is almost zero.
Reliability: 4G Vs 5G
The reliability of the connection is instead the Achilles heel of the 5G network. Both because the network is still underdeveloped and for strictly technical reasons. The higher performances of 5G, in fact, derive mainly from the use of very high radio frequencies, which are able to transmit large amounts of data with a low latency, but only on very restricted areas.
This means that if the device “goes out” of the high frequency cell, the user can say goodbye to many of the advantages of 5G: the connection will hold, but it will move on less performing frequencies. The solution could be to cover the cities with 5G high-frequency repeaters, but the costs would go up a lot and the concerns about electromagnetic pollution also.