5G is coming to your home or business sooner than you think

5G is a hot topic right now, and it is already here! T-Mobile has 5G available throughout Virginia, and Verizon has extended 5G through areas of Washington, DC and is adding more every day.

It may still be little soon to upgrade all of your telecommunications devices, but we’ll keep you posted about the progress throughout our region.

For now, check out When if 5G Coming to the US? in Lifewire, updated January 3, 2020, outlines the status of 5G across the U.S.

What is 5G?

In case you’re scratching your head, wondering what 5G actually is, here is a very high level primer.

In formal tech speak, 5^th Generation of wireless cellular communication is the advancement of the proposed global standards for the next generation of cellular technology in telecommunications. 5G services include:

1. Enhanced Mobile Broadband (EMBB) via ultra-high data rate (or “high throughput”) communications.
2. Support for massive Internet of Things (IoT) by enabling simultaneous connectivity for a large number of low cost devices while maintaining low power consumption.
3. For business and government, mission critical control via Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC)

Today, a diverse set of standards support these three services. The intent of 5G is to replace the fragmented standards with a unified one. It will also, hopefully, make wireless communications as flexible and scalable as cloud computing.

5G comprises a set of new radio technologies, an architecture of an end-to-end wireless system, new frequency bands, liberal use of cloud and edge computing, and a standard that ties all these things together to deliver wireless capacity exactly when and where it is needed.

Should I be excited about 5G?

The short answer is YES!

As we become more dependent upon the Internet of Things, the possibilities 5G presents become more exciting. The fact is, we can’t even imagine what new worlds 5G will open up for us.

We do know that it has the ability to dramatically boost the speed and coverage of wireless networks. It can run between 10 and 100 times faster than your typical 4G cellular connection today. It’s quicker than anything you can get from a physical fiber-optic cable in your house.

And the amount of time between when your phone pings the network and when it responds (called latency) is way faster than Wi-Fi. That’s nice.

There is still some hype around 5G, but it is coming and it is a game changer. Talk to your telecommunications provider to find out when you’ll have access to it.