NE
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5G
The Complete Manual
FOURTH
EDITION
Digital
Edition
100% UNOFFICIAL
Discover the future of mobile networks
Find out how 5G will change your life
I
Welcome to
5G
The Complete Manual
We’ve been listening to networks, phone
manufacturers and politicians rave about 5G for
such a long time now that it’s easy to dismiss
the whole thing as corporate and political hype.
But as soon as you dig beneath the surface
of 5G, scratch past the topsoil of faster movie
downloads and better web browsing, it becomes
clearer what a revolution 5G will be. So if you’re
interested in how the tech works, the ways it’s
going to transform cities and homes or just want
a faster phone, let us fill you in.
I
5G
The Complete Manual
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Contents
What you can find inside the bookazine
Introducing 5G
How 5G will transform...
08 Everything you
need to know
It’s really fast. But speedier
mobile downloads are
only part of why 5G will
change everything
16 How does 5G
improve on 4G?
Here are 10 things 5G can
do that 4G can’t
22 Why 5G is about
more than just speed
It’s a digital revolution, not
just a speed-boost
26 How 5G will
change your life
It’s not just about faster
phones. 5G will help
upgrade society as a whole
46 Wearables
Smartwatches and fitness
trackers could be even
more useful with 5G
50 Smart homes
5G will make your home
smarter, faster, and better
34 Things 5G will do
you didn’t expect
From better music to
a ‘tactile’ internet, here
are some ways 5G will
surprise you
58 Augmented reality
5G could be the key to
unlocking AR’s potential
64 Virtual reality
The next-gen of mobile
connectivity is the boost
VR needs
38 How will 5G
affect security?
The volume of data will
increase in the era of 5G
– but so will its value to
unscrupulous individuals
54 Movies
Get used to a world of
portrait-first video
70 Mobile gaming
Console-grade graphics on
the go thanks to 5G?
“The unprecedented speed upgrade
of 5G could change the way we think
about all of our tech”
6
116
5G phones
tested!
76 Sports
Better for fans, better for
broadcasters
Buyer’s guide
90 AT&T
All the info you need on the
AT&T rollout of 5G and 5G+
in the US
110 O2
Despite launching later with
a smaller slice of the 5G
spectrum, the network is
rapidly gaining ground
94 T-Mobile
Thanks to the Sprint merger,
T-Mobile is growing fast
80 Education
Faster, smarter and more
interactive – a new
generation of learning
98 T-Mobile: Sprint Merger
What exactly did T-Mobile
add to its 5G network when
it merged with Sprint?
102 Verizon
The Verizon 5G network is
offering improved coverage
in several larger cities
106 EE
The network has brought
5G to the most UK towns
84 The workplace
How the next generation of
wireless technology
will empower workers on
the frontline
112 Three
After something of a delay,
Three’s UK 5G phone
network is now live
114 Vodafone
With unlimited tariffs
and roaming on 5G, the
network is looking to
topple some of its rivals
116 The best 5G phones
The best 5G phones deliver
much faster downloads,
lower latency and a lot more
7
Introducing 5G
Everything you need to know
8
Introducing 5G
Everything you need to know
5G
Everything you
need to know
As you might have guessed from the name, 5G – the fifth generation of
mobile technology – is the successor to 4G. On paper, 5G is faster than
any currently available Wi-Fi tech, even maxed out Wi-Fi 6, and faster even
than any home broadband available anywhere outside South Korea. 4G
LTE, the standard we’ve relied on until now, is around 100 times slower
than 5G when considering theoretical lab maximums.
That’s huge, but it’s also not entirely realistic; in real-world applications,
5G introduces something more like a 50 times increase in speed, though
the majority of connections top out a little slower than that.
The raw numbers, even if they’re not wholly likely to be what reach a
phone from the mast, are still impressive, and it’s important to see them in
context. They’re easily enough to pull in entertainment content; the BBC
requires 2.75Mbps to stream high-definition content from iPlayer, while
Netflix asks for around 25Mbps for streaming its Ultra HD video. Even
if new colour technology, frame rates or the move to 8K bumps those
requirements up still further, there’s cavernous headroom in the top-end
1,000Mbps bandwidth of the 5G spec to cope with it. Even if environmental
conditions mean you only get 200Mbps or 300Mbps, that’s still comparable
to the best home broadband connections available today.
9
All images © Getty Images unless otherwise stated
It’s fast. Really fast. But speedier mobile downloads are
only part of why 5G will change everything
Everything you need to know
Introducing 5G
BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS
5G reaches those speeds in a few ways. First, it uses multiple
antennas, allowing it to take advantage of Massive MIMO, which
is similar to the tech used in modern Wi-Fi routers. Put simply,
MIMO involves opening up multiple data streams from and to
your device simultaneously, for a theoretically faster and more
consistent connection.
5G uses frequencies in a similar range to 4G bands, and most
5G modems will also include backwards compatibility and fallback
should a true 5G signal not be available. But that’s not all: 5G also
takes advantage of a new region of the radio spectrum. The 5G
New Radio spec (AKA 5G NR, more on that later) is able to utilise
so-called millimetre waves in the EHF band, running at somewhere
between 30 and 300GHz. The shorter wavelength (emitting pulses
between 10mm and 1mm apart, hence the name) means these
frequencies are capable of huge amounts of bandwidth. Consider, if
you will, the quality of AM radio, which has a long wavelength, with
the much shorter-waved FM – the difference in signal quality and
consistency is stark, because FM’s higher frequency helps it put far
more data into the same time window.
Above: Current 4G LTE has a latency of
30-60ms while 5G could reduce this to as
little as 3ms
10
Introducing 5G
Everything you need to know
How does 5G
compare to 4G?
Median browsing speed
4G 71Mbps
5G 1,400Mbps
Median latency
Data capacity isn’t the only advantage. Improved latency –
jumping from an average of between 30-60ms on 4G LTE to as
little as 3ms – means 5G data can get from one place to another
much faster. 5G radios, in theory, can also be made much smaller,
something which is true at both ends of the communication
equation; devices will be able to shave off space (particularly if
they’re able to drop Wi-Fi modules) and individual 5G transmitters
can be much less intrusive than current masts. Naturally, this also
leads to better power efficiency, giving smart devices the battery
life they so sorely need.
Again, much of this is theoretical, as we’re still in the very early
days of 5G. The continued rollout is likely to focus, as it has so far,
on delivering faster wireless broadband, before moving on to add
additional infrastructure to improve latency and support massive
numbers of smart devices. The service you get today will obviously
not be the same service you’ll get as the network matures – both in
terms of additional masts and service upgrades, and the flip side of
the coin: when the network is supporting an expanded number of
5G devices, it’s likely to slow down somewhat.
4G 115ms
5G 4.9ms
But still, let’s look at the long term: the unprecedented speed
upgrade of 5G could change the way we think about all of our tech,
and bring some massive consequences for the development of
basically everything in the future. The same generation that once
11
Source: Qualcomm network simulation
NEXT-GENERATION HARDWARE
5G 186Mbps
4G 10Mbps
Download Speed (Top 90%)
Introducing 5G
© Getty images
Everything you need to know
“We’ll be able to send messages between devices, over the
air, literally faster than your eye can see”
spent five minutes loading a few kilobytes of
unreliable computer software from cassette tapes
could soon able to download an entire 4K movie
to our phones in seconds. We’ll be able to send
messages between devices, over the air, literally
faster than your eye can see.
It could be the enabler for tomorrow’s
transport network, made up of entirely
autonomous and seamlessly interconnected cars
and trucks. Sharing sensor and mechanical status
data between them, and talking constantly to one
another at super high speed, future cars will be
effectively accident-proof, and they’ll balance their
routing to avoid traffic for a more efficient ride –
something 4G doesn’t have the muscle to keep
up with efficiently. 5G’s huge capacity could also
12
take that transport to the air, backing an intricately
piloted array of delivery drones programmed
to keep to the correct airspace and not clonk
into each other. A Blade-Runner-style flying car
future perhaps isn’t on the cards yet – 5G can’t do
anything about gravity, sadly – but it’s not hard to
see the impact it’ll have.
5G’s high capacity will also take the notoriously
bandwidth-heavy tech of VR to the next level. Not
only could it do away with the wired tether that
makes most PC-led VR experiences awkward and
restrictive, it could also push the powerful PCs
themselves into obsolescence, moving all that
effort into the cloud. You won’t even need to be
at home to strap on a headset, provided you’re
in 5G range – and those autonomous vehicles
Introducing 5G
Everything you need to know
5G can support many more
devices simultaneously
compared to 4G
will know where you are should you wander
into the street while in another world. The low
latency of 5G also means VR should react to your
movements more precisely than ever before,
eliminating the potential for sea sickness caused
by today’s microscopic delay.
5G’s immense bandwidth could make a
huge difference when it comes to crowding. If
you’ve ever been to a concert or sports game
– or even visited a busy town centre – you’ll
know the pain of having a supposedly full 4G
signal yet absolutely atrocious (and possibly
non-existent) data rates. Your local 4G tower, and
the frequencies it uses, can only throw out so
much data at one time. If everyone wants a slice
of the pie, it needs to cut it infinitesimally thin;
5G masts, when all is said and done, will be far
more numerous, and able to support many more
simultaneous devices, although speeds will be
limited by whatever connects those masts to the
main internet.
Kit will be able to stay constantly connected.
Smart devices won’t need to rely on Wi-Fi, and
the smart home will move outwards – indeed,
constant low-power networking could mean
tomorrow’s smart devices do more than we can
even imagine today.
THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN
We’ve barely scraped the surface as to the sort of
technology 5G could one day power, and there
are some who theorise that 5G could lead to
major change: the demise of local storage, the
death of home broadband, even the end of the
smart phone as we know it. There’s a lot of sci-fi
brainstorming out there, mainly because a 5G
future, one with unprecedented connectivity and
network speed, is so exciting to imagine.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that
even though there’s a lot of potential, 5G is
still fluid. The first and most crucial factor of a
successful 5G rollout is consensus; while, happily,
13
Everything you need to know
Introducing 5G
To get the most from 5G users
need a clear path between them
and the mast
it looks like the 5G NR standard has been pretty
much universally adopted worldwide, not every
company adhered to it at the start. US network
Verizon, for example, initially implemented
its own unrelated 5G formula, though it has
stated that it’ll change in the future as long as
5G NR meets its expectations. There are also
different interpretations of that 5G NR standard
to deal with; many countries’ spectrum licensing
regulations do not allow for all possible bands
of the standard to be used, and networks
are generally assigned only a portion of that
available bandwidth.
5G also has a host of other external factors
to deal with. While it’s able to throw around a
massive amount of data very quickly, 5G is far
more prone to atmospheric interference than
slower-speed wireless tech – if you’ve ever
compared 2.4GHz Wi-Fi to 5GHz and noticed the
latter struggling with reach, it’s a similar situation.
5G’s radio waves can, at the most, propagate
around a kilometre in clear line of sight and with
no obstructions, and generally aren’t effectively
14
received outside of around 250m. Put walls or
other obstacles in the way, and that distance is
reduced even further. Taking advantage of the
fastest 5G transmissions requires close proximity
to a mast – so our mobile infrastructure, and even
the theory around it, is going to need a major
overhaul to make 5G the norm.
We’ll also need a jump forward in device
support. Backwards compatibility with 4G
networks won’t be an issue since the older
system won’t be going anywhere for the
foreseeable future, but at the time of press we’re
still waiting for a number of companies to get
fully on board with 5G. That said, networks have
committed to and pushed for a rapid rollout,
and even collaborated with each other to get
the job done in the case of O2 and Vodafone.
Device manufacturers are equally excited to
get on board – with a global standard now
seemingly ratified, and masts popping up all
over, expect 5G support in phones and even
home routers to become the norm. And let’s not
forget consumers. We all want to get our hands
Everything you need to know
Introducing 5G
5G fakery
© Shutterstock
When is 5G not 5G? When it’s
4G wearing a fake moustache
and glasses. Connect an iPhone
running iOS 12.2 or later to
American network AT&T, and
you’ll see a logo for what it calls
5G E. That’s very exciting, but
5G E absolutely isn’t 5G. In fact,
it’s a slightly boosted form of 4G
LTE with an average data rate of
around 40Mbps, slapped with
a confusing and, some might
say, highly shady label. This is a
controversial practice, and hasn’t
gone down well with other
networks (“AT&T is blatantly
misleading consumers,” says rival
Sprint) but we suppose it’s up to
AT&T what it decides to do with
its branding.
There’s more to the not-quite5G equation than just a label,
though. Even a year on we’re
in the early stages of its rollout,
which means that some networks
have only partially launched 5G
coverage. That doesn’t simply
mean limited range, either: some
networks are in what’s called
the non-standalone phase,
which means they have only
implemented certain aspects
of 5G, with the rest being made
up for by 4G tech. Uploads, in
particular, remain handled by 4G
on a large number of networks
worldwide. It’s not likely to be
forever, particularly when 5G for
home broadband becomes a
regular technology, but if you’re
getting slow uploads, that’s likely
the reason – and given that a
couple of key players providing
technology for the 5G backbone
have been blackballed in many
places, it could be a while yet.
“The 5G rollout may focus on delivering
faster wireless broadband first”
on 5G devices. This means it’s a perfect storm of demand and,
hopefully, supply.
YEARS OF HOPE
5G absolutely means a bright future for technology, and it’s
tantalisingly close. By the end of 2019, the UK’s networks had
already installed limited 5G in some of the country’s busiest urban
areas, and 2020 has seen a big expansion. But the rollout will not
be as fast as, say, 4G, which itself was frustratingly slow to grow
– 5G’s comparatively short range means it requires many more
transmitters, making widespread installation a difficult task made
even harder by certain controversial Chinese telecommunications
companies. It could be years until 5G reaches your street. Rural areas
will almost certainly have to wait even longer once the main 5G
rollout is complete, but for those forced to rely on satellite internet
because traditional broadband is too expensive to install, 5G (when
and if it reaches them) may be a truly life-changing tech.
We’re also not positive on what the price will be when 5G
becomes the norm. If 5G continues with its current capped data
plans, its utility may be limited not by its speed but by its cost – so
your home broadband is safe for now. But that’s an ‘if’ – given the
potential capacity of 5G, unmetered connections like the 50 Euro
per month plan from Finnish network Elisa may be a solid possibility.
15
How does 5G improve on 4G?
Introducing 5G
How does 5G
improve on 4G?
Above: With 5G it is possible to transfer far
more data than 4G in the same time frame
Right: Huawei caused a real stir in 2019 when
it announced the world’s first 5G 8K TV
Here are 10 things 5G can do that 4G can’t
From the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G to the OnePlus 9 Pro and
beyond, there are now plenty of great 5G phones on the market.
Alongside them, the 5G networks have continued to expand –
although coverage is far from ubiquitous yet.
If you live somewhere where 5G is available, it could be worth
signing up, as it’s much faster than 4G, offering lower latency and lots
of other benefits besides speedy connections.
It’s the next generation of mobile technology, set to leave 4G in its
dust, thanks to faster downloads, smoother streaming and more. But it
doesn’t just have speed on its side; it will also open up whole new use
cases that just weren’t possible or practical on 4G.
Some of the best uses for 5G may not even have been thought
up yet, but for ten exciting ones that we already know about, read on.
Above: Console-quality games could be
streamed to mobile devices with little lag
16
Introducing 5G
How does 5G improve on 4G?
01. Console-quality online gaming
with no lag
02. 8K video streaming
Streaming 4K video isn’t something many people
do over 4G. With 5G, however, it should be
possible to take a giant leap forward and stream
video in 8K quality without buffering.
Because data can be transferred faster with 5G,
it’s possible to transfer more in the same amount
of time, meaning that you can stream in far higher
qualities with no noticeable difference in how fast
and smoothly the footage is delivered.
We don’t have devices that can take advantage
of this just yet, but we expect they’ll be on the way
soon now the tech is there for it.
© Huawei
Online gaming over a mobile network isn’t always
ideal – not just because of speed, but also latency.
Latency is the time it takes for the network to
respond to a request, and that should be a lot
quicker with 5G.
This means that when you input a command in
a game it will happen instantly, so you won’t miss
out on crucial kills or be stuck watching helplessly
as your character runs off the edge of a platform
because of lag.
Online games themselves could become more
detailed and closer to console quality, since higher
network speeds will better handle multiple players
in these worlds.
There will also be the potential for the games
themselves to be streamed, leveraging the power
of 5G to handle the heavy lifting in the cloud and
allowing for higher end games than your phone
might otherwise be capable of – along the lines of
what Google Stadia can do.
17
Introducing 5G
How does 5G improve on 4G?
03. Huge downloads
in a flash
As well as streaming in
higher resolutions, you’ll be
able to download content
far faster over 5G, which
will make downloading
8K movies more viable.
Technically, you could
download them over a 4G
or even 3G connection, but
it would be extremely slow.
Plus, the extra speed of 5G
will help make any large
downloads more viable,
which could also mean
bigger games and apps,
with better graphics and
more features. So you might
want to make sure you have
a phone with plenty of
storage going forward.
04. VR game streaming
Speaking of streaming games, the sky really is the limit once you
move processing to the cloud, which 5G will help to enable.
We won’t just be looking at console-quality games, but potentially
also richly detailed VR games, way beyond what current phonebased headsets and maybe even the likes of PlayStation VR are
capable of, all played on a phone or even just a headset with no real
computing capabilities built in.
05. Live-streaming events in VR
Getting closer to live sporting events and concerts through VR isn’t a
totally new concept, but it’s still very rare and usually requires a speedy
home internet connection to achieve. However, with 5G you should be
able to strap on a mobile VR headset and get front row seats wherever
you are.
Live-streaming events in VR over 5G has the potential to bring
events to life in a whole new way, and makes the idea of splashing out
on tickets to be there in person seem far less appealing.
18
Introducing 5G
How does 5G improve on 4G?
It's not just about mobile phones; 5G could also
lead to far more live events being broadcast
on TV. With current technology, companies are
limited by lower speeds out in the field or massive
equipment, such as broadcast trucks.
With 5G, the speed and portability of
equipment can both be massively increased,
meaning it will be viable and affordable to
broadcast more niche events. Suddenly, you
might be able to watch every football match
rather than just the bigger games, while
broadcasting live concerts could become the
standard, rather than a rarity.
Red Bee Media, a broadcasting services
company, has argued that this ability to broadcast
more live events will help traditional broadcasters
compete with on-demand services like Netflix. In
other words, there might be life in linear TV yet.
© Vodafone
06. More live-streaming of events in
general
07. Holographic calls
You can already make video calls, but how about
holographic calls? It’s something Vodafone has
already successfully carried out over 5G.
While there are more technologies involved
than just 5G itself, it means that one day you could
virtually be in the same room as the person you’re
talking to, making the world feel ever smaller and
hopefully bringing people ever closer together, too.
19
Introducing 5G
© Shutterstock
How does 5G improve on 4G?
08. Smarter homes
and cities
One thing the speed and
bandwidth of 5G could really
help with is the Internet
of Things (IoT). Although
we’re already seeing the
beginnings of this, with
everything from smart
thermostats to smart lights
appearing in people’s
homes, 5G should provide
the capacity needed
to make nearly every
connected home smart.
And it won’t just be
homes. We should start
seeing truly smart towns and
cities powered by 5G. This
would mean cities with the
ability to monitor pollution,
traffic, pedestrian flow,
energy use and more, all in
real-time.
This in turn could cut
resource use and costs, for
example by allowing street
lights to automatically dim
when there’s no one around
– leading to leaner, greener
urban areas. If you think the
world is connected now, you
ain’t seen nothing yet.
09. Enhanced augmented reality
© Shutterstock
Augmented reality is a technology we’ve seen a lot of over the last
few years, but it’s still in the very early stages. 5G could change that.
With the high speeds and low latency offered, it will be able to
augment reality in far greater ways than is possible on 4G. In the
future you might even see completely personalised billboards
projected through your car’s windscreen or your smart glasses.
Speaking of cars, 5G could potentially enable features like navigation
instructions overlaid on the road when viewed through a smart
windscreen. Those are just two examples, but AR clearly offers a lot
more than just Pokémon Go.
10. Mainstream autonomous vehicles
5G could be the key to making self-driving cars commonplace. For
them to work most effectively they need to be able to rapidly send
and receive data to and from other cars, smart roads and more,
which requires a speedy network, low latency, lots of bandwidth
and high reliability. 5G promises all of that.
As Ordnance Survey explained to the BBC: "When you switch
a light on, it turns on immediately. That's what you need with
autonomous cars – if something happens, the car needs to stop
immediately. That's why [...] 5G signals are required."
20
Introducing 5G
How does 5G improve on 4G?
21
Introducing 5G
© Deutsche Telekom
Why 5G is about more than just speed
Why 5G is about more
than just speed
It’s a digital revolution, not just a speed-boost
5G is here, but if you think it’s all about ultra-quick
downloads and web pages that are faster to load,
you’re only half-right. New 5G cells will be able
to transfer not just more data, more quickly, but
they’ll also communicate instantly.
A real-time internet is coming, which means
a real-time cloud, and the creation of a new class
of electronics that can exchange information fast
enough to make near-instant decisions.
Cue driverless cars, drones, trains and much
more besides. A tactile internet where touch
becomes as important as what you see or hear.
A new era of electronics where wearables, smart
fabrics, and connected-everything is possible.
The Internet of Things (IoT) in full bloom, but also
22
a new, real-time economy based on an industrialscale IoT.
None of these things will happen overnight.
5G will take years and years to significantly spread
beyond 5G hotspots in urban areas. 5G won’t be
egalitarian either; select urbanites (and businesses)
will have it first, while everyone else will only
experience it occasionally. It will be years until we
all use it regularly.
However, we do know that 5G, when it finally
reaches mainstream adoption, is going to be
about significantly more than just having 1Gbps
speed connections on our smartphones. Here
are five things about 5G that are more important
than the speed.
Introducing 5G
Why 5G is about more than just speed
01. More capacity
02. Better quality
voice calls
5G is just as much about capacity, as it is about speed.
An important part of the 5G spec is what’s known as mMTC
(massive Machine Type Communications). The result of this kind of
communication is something incredible: up to a million connected
devices per square kilometre.
Why does that matter? Take a sports stadium. Put yourself in
a crowd of 50,000 and, right now, you cannot get a phone signal.
Want to find out other scores at half-time? Or send a text during a
match? Forget it.
However, with 5G, not only will anyone at a major event be able
to get online, livestream video, and make calls, but a lot more tech
will be enabled in the stadium itself.
Why bother with those big screens, and even scoreboards, at
either end of the stadium when the organisers could just make it
available for anyone in the stadium to stream on their phone or
tablet? It’s even possible that spectators could don a camera and
livestream what they can see, in HD, to anyone at home… perhaps
even in 360 degrees to anyone with a VR headset.
Away from stadiums, 5G could be beneficial in busy places
where live updates are be useful, such as in airports and train
stations – bringing us better connectivity on the move.
WhatsApp is convenient,
and it’s free, but there’s
another reason that more
and more of us are using
the messaging app to make
voice calls.
Voice calls made over
WhatsApp – and any voiceover-internet-protocol (VoIP)
service like Skype or Zoom
– are much, much clearer
than on the phone network.
High-definition voice wasn’t
a priority for the designers
of 3G and 4G networks, but
with 5G, you can expect all
voice calls and video calls to
contain speech that’s clearer,
sharper and altogether much
more realistic.
It’s about time. And it’s
set to go further than simply
HD with so-called Voice
over 5G (Vo5G), which looks
set to be an integral part of
other 5G services, such as
video calling, telepresence,
augmented reality (AR)
and virtual reality (VR).
© EE
© WhatsApp
“A real-time internet is coming, which
means a real-time cloud”
23
Introducing 5G
Why 5G is about more than just speed
© Bosch
Connectivity could lead to
fewer incidents on the road as
well as better fuel economy
03. Platooning
A key part of the 5G specification is URLLC (UltraReliable and Low Latency Communications),
which allows for reliable, instant communications
between the network and devices.
This is what makes the era of driverless cars
a very real possibility, by allowing vehicles to
communicate their exact speed and position with
each other in real-time.
Known as Cellular-V2X (C-V2X), it could
eventually lead to something called platooning,
which will get traffic moving faster. Groups of
vehicles in a connected platoon will be able to
drive with a one-second gap between each
vehicle, automatically matching each other’s
speed and braking. The reaction time for braking
could be reduced to zero.
24
Platooning will basically mean the vehicle
at the front of the group will dictate the speed.
Although it could affect all driving, for now the
tech is mostly being talked-up for trucks and
haulage, not only to make goods transport more
efficient, but also to reduce carbon emissions.
“Platooning has the potential to improve
traffic flows on highways and to decrease the
environmental impact of transport,” says Gunnar
Tornmalm, head of predevelopment, systems
development at Scania, who adds that drag
accounts for 25% of a truck’s fuel consumption.
“However, the technology will only reach
markets broadly if vehicles from more than one
brand can find each other,” he adds. A format war
is never far away, is it?
Introducing 5G
Why 5G is about more than just speed
04. Human health
The proximity of the timing of 5G’s rollout to
that of the global pandemic, coupled with
previous fears about microwave radiation and
electromagnetic fields in phones, has led 5G to
become something of a pariah for some. There
are those that claim that 5G is damaging to health
or, preposterously, responsible for the pandemic
itself. These are the kinds of people that usually
carry placards and refuse to wear a mask in public.
You know the type.
There is certainly research to be done on the
long-term effects of 5G’s frequencies and likely a lot
of ‘not in my back yard’ nonsense to go through,
given that masts will need to be installed on a
much more local level to ensure strong coverage.
But you can rest assured that there are no proven
health risks associated with 5G, just as there were
none with 4G or 3G before it. Even 5G’s fastest
frequencies fall into the bracket of non-ionising
radiation, and land on the complete opposite side
of the electromagnetic spectrum to harmful things
like X-rays. So don’t heed the hysteria.
You can already broadcast VR 360-degree video
on Facebook, but the quality is pretty poor. It’s the
same story for breaking news footage, which is
presently done in low resolution.
News-gathering, live sports, and events need
to catch up to the 4K era, then go way beyond to
8K, AR and VR. Could 5G transform broadcasting?
AT&T and LiveU have just begun working to
bring 5G to LiveU’s HEVC (High Efficiency Video
Coding) portable broadcast units. They’re going
to test the real-world impact and performance
enhancements 5G technology can have on live
broadcast video production using LiveU HEVC
portable broadcast units.
This is about broadcasters taking advantage
of 5G’s higher speeds and lower latency in the
field. “We see 5G as a critical advancement
for the broadcast industry disrupting the way
breaking news, live sports, and other live events
are produced,” says Avi Cohen, chief operations
officer and co-founder of LiveU.
“We anticipate the technology will bring more
capabilities to our customers such as multiple
channels of audio, multi-camera productions
from a single portable transmission solution, 4K
streaming, and high-quality video return.”
© Live U
© Ericsson
05. Mobile broadcasting
25
© Getty
How 5G will
change your life
It's not just about faster phones. 5G will help
upgrade society as a whole
Clearly, 5G will have bigger ramifications on your
life than putting a faster phone in your pocket
(though we are excited for that). Rather than just
being about streaming 8K videos and gaming on
the go, it in fact has the potential to absolutely
transform your life, revolutionising the way we
receive and use information.
While it’s easy to focus on the personal
benefits 5G will bring each of us, it also stands
26
to have a much bigger impact on society as
a whole. For example, it will replace home
broadband and bridge the gap between rural
areas and cities; give kids in schools more
learning tools; improve health care outcomes;
make streets safer with self-driving cars; and
bring augmented reality from a Google-Glasslike spectacle into the mainstream.
Here’s how.
How 5G will change your life
© Verizon
Introducing 5G
5G providers: A number of internet
providers already have 5G networks up
and running
5G IN YOUR HOME: CABLE BROADBAND KILLER?
5G isn’t just going to make your phone faster. Theoretically, your
home internet will also be faster if you opt for 5G fixed wireless
over broadband. Instead of paying a cable company to wire your
place and hook you up to the internet, you can install an antenna
that beams 5G into your home from a cell tower. For rural areas in
which laying cable is super-expensive, grabbing a 5G signal from an
existing tower would be much cheaper.
“We used to talk about fibre to the home and running cable in
the neighbourhoods. People were excited about that, and you had
to check your ZIP code to see if it was available in your area,” says
Steve Koenig, vice president of research for the Consumer Technology
Association. “5G won’t eliminate that, because there will sometimes
need to be a physical connection, but for consumers, your home
broadband service could be 5G. 5G can penetrate better than 4G
because it penetrates across three bands: low, mid and high.”
Carriers like Verizon and AT&T are already getting into the 5G
fixed wireless business, and though it’s the early days still, increased
competition for cable providers could mean lower home internet
bills for consumers, who still don’t have many options when it
comes to broadband.
27
How 5G will change your life
Introducing 5G
“Why watch it on
YouTube? Why not just
put on your AR glasses
and say: ‘Alexa, show me
instructions please.’”
28
How 5G will change your life
“Why watch it on YouTube? Why not just
put on your AR glasses and say, ‘Alexa, show me
instructions please,” says Peter Linder, head of 5G
marketing at Ericsson
Linder goes on to explain that fixed wireless
could improve internet access for people outside
metropolitan areas, where fixed broadband
connections aren’t great and mobile connectivity
isn’t much better.
“If we’re trying to make the city smart, we
have to make sure the countryside is clever,”
Linder says. “Otherwise the gap between rural
and metropolitan opportunities is going to get
even bigger.”
5G ON YOUR BODY: AUGMENTEDREALITY GLASSES GET REAL
Many experts also predict that 5G will usher
in the era of augmented reality. While people
have been hyping AR for years, 5G will make the
Introducing 5G
devices that we will still need to wear to overlay
information on top of our vision a whole lot
lighter and thinner. To get an idea of what that
may look like, picture something like the defunct
Google Glass, but considerably more attractive.
“5G connectivity may not just be on your
phone, it could be across a range of consumer
devices: wearables, like AR glasses, could have
their own 5G connection,” explains Koenig.
Currently, augmented-reality glasses require
a connection to a computer – either over a
Wi-Fi connection or physically tethered to a
wall-mounted or a wearable computer attached
to, for instance, a belt. Headsets with fully
integrated computers, like Microsoft’s HoloLens
2, are massive. 5G AR glasses would eliminate
connectivity issues and would be comfortable
enough to wear for lengthy periods of time. That
would unlock a whole new way of interacting
with the world.
Augmented reality places
computer-generated images
into the real-time environment
29
How 5G will change your life
Introducing 5G
5G IN THE CLASSROOM:
FLYING OVER THE GREAT WALL
There’s a presentation about China: a PowerPoint.
It’s a good environment. But there’s another
child in the class. [The teacher says]: ‘Put on that
headset and we’ll drop you into a 360-degree
video so you can be [in China] without being
there.’ [The kid says:] ‘I’m flying over the Great Wall!
That is unbelievable!’ The second child had an
experience. A whole chunk of his brain lit up. That
immersive environment is between three and
eight times more effective.”
© Shutterstock
The faster speeds and lower latency that 5G
will deliver will make AR and virtual reality
transformative for kids in classrooms.
Toby Redshaw, senior vice president of 5G
innovation at Verizon, offers a scenario in which
5G could make education more accessible: “You
have a child that sits in a class for four hours.
© Getty Images
“I grew up reading manuals, and my daughter
laughs about that: ‘Why don’t you just watch it
on YouTube?’” says Ericsson’s Linder. “I think her
kids will laugh: ‘Why did you watch it on YouTube?
Why not just put on your AR glasses and say,
‘Alexa, show me instructions please.’
“[In] the 4G era the input to the device is more
or less centred around always tapping on glass
– the output to you is coming out of the glass
window. 5G is breaking out of that as the only
way of doing things.”
30
How 5G will change your life
© Verizon
Introducing 5G
“For students who need
more than a lecture or a
textbook to fully understand
concepts, 5G could unlock a
whole new way to learn”
Verizon put out a call for innovative
applications for 5G in middle-school classrooms
for its 5G EdTech Challenge. Earlier this year, the
carrier’s foundation awarded $1m to 10 groups
that created ways to make 5G useful in the
classroom. Some of the winning ideas included a
virtual-reality experience of space, a mixed-reality
game to help students with autism work on social
skills, and an app that brings physics to life.
For students who need more than a lecture or
a textbook to fully understand concepts, 5G could
unlock a whole new way to learn.
5G IN THE HOSPITAL: HOLOGRAPHIC
SURGERIES AND BEYOND
Just as 5G could make it easier for kids to
experience subjects that most of us have only
read about in books, next-gen speeds combined
with augmented reality could also make it easier
for doctors to learn and perfect procedures.
In May 2019, medical startup Medivis
received approval from the US Food and Drug
Administration for an augmented-reality platform
called Surgical AR that will guide surgeons
through procedures via a holographic overlay
on the patient. Earlier that year at CES, Medivis
CEO Christopher Morley said that 5G will reduce
latency so much that surgeons will be able to
use AR to perform surgeries in real time. Morley
expects 5G and AR will reduce the possibility of
error and improve post-surgical outcomes.
But 5G could take surgeons out of the
operating theatre entirely. The Consumer
Technology Association’s Koenig says 5G could
allow doctors to perform operations remotely
using 5G-connected robots.
Outside of surgical suites, 5G could improve
health care outcomes across the board. Columbia
University is using Verizon’s 5G network to test
remote rehabilitation for stroke patients using
virtual-reality headsets. Therapists remotely guide
patients, who are wearing VR headsets, through
exercises to improve their motor skills, which
is critical for those who can’t travel to facilities
for in-patient rehab. The program is also useful
for therapists, because it analyses everyone
31
Introducing 5G
How 5G will change your life
© Verizon
The speed of 5G can reduce
latency when using programs
such as Surgical AR
who follows the program and determines if the
exercises actually work.
“How often does this great therapist show up
in rural Arkansas, or east Los Angeles? Probably
never,” Verizon’s Redshaw says. “In the 5G world,
what do I need for this person to show up? I need
them to have a connection and this $200 set of
goggles. Economically that’s a great thing for that
industry and, for patients, it’s fantastic to blast
through socioeconomic barriers.”
5G IN SELF-DRIVING CARS: SAFER
(AND MORE FUN) RIDES
Self-driving cars are already being tested on the
roads, but experts predict that 5G will make them
safer and alleviate concerns that most of us have
about letting a computer drive for us. It’s also one
of the most exciting use cases for 5G – and there’s
a lot at stake.
32
“Connecting cars, giving them the ability to
connect to the internet, streaming movies to
passengers – but also advanced safety [features],
giving the cars ability to communicate with
other cars, passengers [and] infrastructure.
Those are the marquee [use cases for 5G],”
explains Danny Tseng, technical marketing
manager at Qualcomm.
Above the fleets of self-driving vehicles that
Tseng, Koenig and others imagine will take over
the roads in the near future, autonomous drones
will be delivering packages and embarking
on rescue missions with the help of 5G. The
time it takes for a drone to receive instructions
and deliver footage to the ground will be
near instantaneous over 5G, which will make
its missions much safer and more accurate –
whether they are for Amazon deliveries or searchand-rescue operations.
How 5G will change your life
Introducing 5G
“5G could take surgeons out of the operating theatre entirely,
allowing doctors to perform operations remotely using
5G-connected robots”
OK, COOL – BUT WHEN IS THIS 5G NIRVANA
HAPPENING?
The transformative potential of 5G can sometimes feel overblown.
After all, many people still can’t even access a 5G network yet, and
we have been talking about it for years. But you can expect that to
change very soon.
“You’re not going to see this incremental thing,” says Verizon’s
Redshaw. “It’ll be: ‘‘Wow, now I’m surrounded by 5G.’ You’ll start to
see the differences between non-5G spaces and 5G spaces by the
end of next year. Marry sizzle to economic benefit and you’ll see this
take off tremendously.”
But what exactly will happen when 5G is everywhere? We
obviously have some ideas, but there are also life-changing
applications that no one has thought of.
“5G is going to be a catalyst of incredible innovation, much like
we saw with 4G mobile broadband,” says Koenig. “Some of which
haven’t been imagined yet.”
5G networks: The switch to 5G will be
instantaneous rather than a gradual change
33
Introducing 5G
Things 5G will do you didn’t expect
Things 5G will do
you didn’t expect
From better music to a ‘tactile’ internet, here are some ways 5G will surprise you
Download a 4K movie in three seconds! That’s
the headline feature of 5G according to the lazy
mainstream media, which is probably why the
public aren’t yet as excited about 5G as they
should be.
So 5G isn’t about downloading movies
quickly? No, though the focus on 5G’s incredible
speeds is no surprise. After all, 5G networks will
bring speeds of about 1Gbps.
Compare that to the 4G LTE networks we have
in the UK right now that offer speeds of about
20Mbps; 5G will be 100 times faster, and in the
long-term it’s expected to jump even further up
to 20Gbps.
34
However, this is just the eMBB (enhanced
Mobile Broadband) feature of 5G, which is only a
small part of the story.
To understand 5G, you need to know that 5G
networks will be able to support up to a million
devices per square kilometre thanks to massive
Machine Type Communications (mMTC) and that
they’ll also have Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency
Communications (URLLC).
Jargon? Yes, but by being super-fast, superdense and enabling latency-free communication,
5G will bring changes to the tech world we can
only imagine. Luckily, we can imagine quite a lot
already… besides, who still downloads movies?
Introducing 5G
Things 5G will do you didn’t expect
02. The ‘tactile internet’
01. An internet of (many) things
A core 5G feature is mMTC, and that’s about
density. It’s great news for sports fans. Never again
will you sit in a packed stadium and be unable to
use your phone.
That’s because 5G networks can support up
to a million devices per square kilometre – but
face-timing at the football is only one tiny aspect
of what 5G will enable.
With that kind of support, the number of
connected devices will explode. That Fitbit on
your wrist? Why bother when you could have
sensors all over your body – perhaps in clothes –
that communicate with each other, and with the
cloud via the 5G network, in real-time?
Everything you own could be connected
to the network, such as your backpack, the
belongings inside, headsets, headphones, bikes,
car…and family members. This could extend to
industry as well, with companies’ assets, farm
equipment, robots, and even tanks.
Another dimension of low latency is the realtime cloud. Instead of needing local processing
power, devices like phones, wearables and laptops
will link to the cloud for everything – files, data
and artificial intelligence – perhaps only storing
the absolute essential data on devices.
That means smaller and essentially ‘dumb’
devices that are conduits to the cloud.
5G’s URLLC feature is all about low latency.
Latency is the time it takes for a communication
to start, stop and then start again, which you can
experience every time you try to load a webpage.
On a 4G network it takes at least 40
milliseconds, but 5G could reduce that to just
a single millisecond. Think about it; 5G could
change everything we do online on our
smartphones by making it near instantaneous.
Cue the ‘tactile internet’. Defined as instant,
interactive communications, the tactile internet
could enable a revolution in industry, with robots
able to receive instructions in real-time, essentially
allowing them to collaborate on complex tasks.
In healthcare, surgeons could be able to see
body scans and brain scans in real time, examine
a patient remotely using a telepresence unit, and
perhaps even remotely operate on patients using
a surgical robot controlled across the internet.
“Instead of needing local
processing power, devices
like phones, wearables and
laptops will link to the cloud”
35
Introducing 5G
Things 5G will do you didn’t expect
04. Connected hotels
03. Smart buildings
It’s not just inside the home where 5G will enable
more devices to get online – it’s out in the wider
world too. The extra capacity and bandwidth
of 5G technology means that buildings and
street furniture can be fully connected and
communicating with other infrastructure,
opening up a wealth of new possibilities for
autonomous systems that can operate with
minimal help from a human being.
Imagine lighting, heating and security all
managed automatically across an office block,
with sensors reporting back on current conditions
and a central computer making decisions about
how devices should be managed: in all kinds
of different areas, the workplaces of the future
should become more energy efficient and safer as
a result of the spread of 5G. More 5G-connected
sensors could tell you how busy the canteen or
car park is without you having to move from your
desk (very useful if you have to go up or down
several flights of stairs to get there).
Look for 5G-enabled sensors to be embedded
in outdoor street furniture too, everything from
speed bumps that communicate with self-driving
cars, to air quality monitors that can tell city
planners about pollution levels in real time. We may
even see smart traffic lights that adjust themselves
based on the flow of traffic around a city.
36
5G means faster speeds, lower latency, more
bandwidth and more reliability, and that’s going to
be very useful indeed for hotels. While many hotels
are already packed with gadgetry and wireless
connections that cover Wi-Fi and 4G, the arrival
of 5G should take the technology to another level
– and we’ve already seen some venues start to
experiment with what 5G can offer.
In short, this means more connectivity and
convenience, and we’re not just talking about
being able to connect to the web when you’re
relaxing (or trying to get some work done) in your
hotel room. Applications of 5G for consumers in
the home will also apply to travellers in a hotel:
think 5G virtual reality rowing machines in the gym,
5G cloud gaming and computing services you can
connect to in a second, and high-resolution video
streaming to a big screen in every room (with
rooms constantly monitored for air quality and
temperature as well of course).
The rollout of 5G should also lead to more
automation in the hospitality industry and a greater
use of robotics in hotels – when you check in or
visit the restaurant, you might be greeted by a
robot or a electronic display more often than an
actual person, or maybe you’ll get shown around
the premises by a 5G-connected droid that never
gets tired of giving guests essential information.
Introducing 5G
Things 5G will do you didn’t expect
“’Although a lot of the 5G talk is around
video-based entertainment, a lot could
change in the music world”
05. Hi-res audio everywhere
Although a lot of the 5G talk is around videobased entertainment, a lot could change
in the music world. After all, why persist
with compressed MP3 and iTunes AAC files
when hi-res uncompressed 24-bit/192kHz
audio as FLAC, WAV and MQA music files are
just as easy to stream over a 5G network?
Hi-res audio (HRA) is lossless audio codec
capable of reproducing the full range of sound
from recordings that have been mastered from
better-than-CD quality music sources.
The massively increased bandwidth
coming with 5G will likely popularise and
normalise high-quality audio, which for now is
a relatively small niche among audiophiles.
It’s growing though, with Tidal, Deezer
and Qobuz already offering hi-res music,
while Amazon is reportedly about to launch
a hi-res audio streaming service. There’s also
Spotify Hi-Fi that offers listeners lossless CD
quality. Let’s just hope 5G phones come with
unlimited data plans…
37
How will 5G affect security?
Introducing 5G
38
How will 5G affect security?
Introducing 5G
How will 5G
affect security?
The volume of data will increase in the era of 5G
– but so will its value to unscrupulous individuals
It’s easy to overhype 5G, but it’s not an exaggeration to suggest the
arrival of the next generation network represents the most significant
development in the history of mobile communications.
The transitions from 2G to 3G, and 3G to 4G, both delivered significant
performance enhancements and new capabilities that have allowed
mobile technology to become an integral part of everyday life.
39
How will 5G affect security?
Introducing 5G
© Getty Images
More devices at home mean
will mean that security is more
important than ever
5G is no exception, offering greater speeds and
capacity that will allow for a faster and more reliable
connection. Mobile operators are rebuilding their
networks so the time it takes for data to be sent
across them is significantly reduced.
Not only this but 5G is the first generation
of mobile network to be designed for machineto-machine (M2M) communication, enabling a
whole range of new use cases that promise to
change how we live, work and play.
The possibilities are seemingly endless – but
could this new era of ubiquitous connectivity
introduce new security risks?
For example, eHealth applications will collect
extremely personal data about our bodies and
wellbeing, connected car services will monitor
our movements and smart city applications will
collect information about how we live our lives.
THE CHALLENGE TO PRIVACY
This data collection will be accelerated by
the sheer number of connected objects. It is
thought that in the 5G future, the smartphone
will become a super-connected hub for other
personal devices like smartwatches.
Meanwhile, as the first generation of
mobile connectivity to be designed for M2M
communication, your 5G-enabled devices will
The biggest security challenge that 5G networks
pose is to our privacy. 5G networks will enable new
kinds of applications and will allow us to connect
more devices to the network (and to each other),
encouraging us to capture and share more and
more of our personal data. Some of which may
never have been captured digitally in the past.
40
“5G networks will
encourage us to capture
and share more and more
of our personal data”
How will 5G affect security?
Introducing 5G
‘talk’ to countless sensors that comprise the
connected world.
All of this is an opportunity to harvest more of
our data.
THE THREATS OF 5G
There’s no doubt that in the vast majority of cases,
this data will be used ethically and will be useful
to the user. However, the increased volume and
variety of information makes it more valuable to
attackers who have nefarious intentions.
The scope for blackmail, identity theft, and
even personal safety would be potentially
limitless. For example, what if an attacker
was able to access to a 5G-enabled camera
or connected car application? Some are also
concerned that because 5G needs more
network sites to compensate for reduced range,
that the location data held by operators would
be more accurate, potentially giving hackers your
exact address.
Meanwhile, the increased number of
connected devices means more targets and
launchpads for attacks. If just one of your devices
isn’t configured correctly, then it might be
possible for cybercriminals to steal data or launch
a more widespread attack using a botnet.
BUILT-IN SECURITY
The threat to privacy is one of several reasons
why the debate about 5G security has become
41
How will 5G affect security?
© iStock
Introducing 5G
“It’s important to recognise that there’s no reason for 5G
networks to be any less secure to use than 4G”
so prominent in the media. As more sensitive
data is transmitted across the network and more
mission-critical applications become reliant
on 5G, the risk of an attack, service outage, or
state-sponsored surveillance operation becomes
increasingly unpalatable.
Infrastructure left insecure – either by
accident or design – is simply too great a risk
to contemplate. The good news is that mobile
operators are ensuring that security is built into
the fabric of their 5G networks.
5G is a more secure standard than 4G, while
more stringent testing requirements and security
obligations at a national and international level
should minimise the risk of vulnerabilities in
telecoms equipment.
Despite recent debates about the security
of Huawei kit in the UK, there’s no evidence
to suggest that any major vendor is a risk, and
operators are likely to build their networks in
a way that minimises the risk of an outage or
anyone accessing your data.
42
5G networks comprise three main elements.
The radio network transmits data from your
phone to the mast, the transport network sends
this from the mast to the core network, and the
core network processes the data and sends it
back again. The core is the most sensitive part of
the network as it handles all the main customer
data and information.
Operators will use a mixture of suppliers in each
part of the network and, just for added piece of
mind, Huawei kit has now been banned from the
UK and will be removed entirely by 2027. But this
should be of little concern because, as one major
operator said, hacking a phone mast is so pointless
you might as well hack a phone.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
It’s important to recognise that there’s no reason
for 5G networks to be any less secure to use than
4G. A mobile network can never be 100% fail-safe,
but it’s significantly safer to use than public Wi-Fi,
for example.
How will 5G affect security?
5G enables ‘network slicing’, which allows
operators to effectively ring-fence part of the
network for a dedicated user or application,
guaranteeing speed and capacity, and stopping
anyone else from accessing that bandwidth. It’s
also worth bearing in mind that all data sent over
5G is encrypted.
Meanwhile, mobile operators are working to
ensure their services are as secure as possible at
an infrastructure level. It’s not surprising, given
a report from Ericsson found that four out of ten
people consider the security and trustworthiness
of a network to be important considerations
when picking a provider.
What 5G does change significantly is the
applications and devices that we will use. This
means the precautions you take to secure your
device are even more important.
Basic measures such as using a PIN code or
biometric security to access your smartphone
Introducing 5G
should be the bare minimum. You should only
grant permissions to applications you trust, use
encrypted applications where possible, and be
wary of granting access to health or location data
if there isn’t a clear need for it.
If you’re not convinced, then bear in mind
future 5G devices will offer increasingly advanced
security options and it appears as though there
is some demand. It may sound like science
fiction, but according to Ericsson, 29% of people
questioned would like DNA authentication to be a
biometric security option.
It’s unlikely that the debate about best practices
and protection will go away any time soon, such is
the growing importance of mobile connectivity to
our everyday life. But at least it means the mobile
industry is committed to finding answers.
And if you’re bored of it already, you’ll be
delighted to know that work on 6G, the successor
to 5G, has already started.
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How 5G will transform
Intro
How 5G will transform...
Given 5G’s lightning fast speeds and almost imperceptible latencies,
it stands to revolutionise almost all areas of society
As we’ve already established, 5G is an
absolutely game-changing technology. And
very little of that is because it will allow us to
stream 4K movies on the go. Well, alright, that’s
pretty great too. But the really exciting thing
about the new standard is how it stands to
revolutionise the way we do so many different
things in ways we’re scarcely able to predict.
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Whether you’re itching to get behind the
wheel of a self-driving car, lose yourself in
virtual worlds, embed your clothing chockfull of sensors or just still get reliable signal in
a packed football stadium, 5G is coming to
make those dreams a reality.
How 5G will transform
Intro
45
How 5G will transform
Wearables
Wearables
Smartwatches and fitness trackers could be even more useful with 5G
Faster, better, and the future of mobile
internet, 5G is certainly the connection you want
on your smartphone. It means faster speeds for
when you want to download something in a
hurry, as well as being able to stream video more
efficiently while sitting on the train during your
daily commute.
With speeds potentially being 100 times faster
than standard 4G, the new norm is going to be
46
spectacularly speedy (providing you live in an area
that supports 5G).
What does that mean for your smartwatch or
fitness wearable though? It’s not as though you’ll
find yourself often downloading hefty files to your
watch or fitness tracker, after all. So will 5G really
make a significant difference to smartwatch users?
With a growing trend for wearables to be
self-sufficient rather than relying on smartphone
How 5G will transform
Wearables
connectivity, there’s huge potential for growth
here, but not necessarily in the same way that
you’ll see with your smartphone. The importance
of 5G to wearables is a little more complicated
than simply being faster.
What we do know so far is that the way
we use our beloved wearables could be set to
change rapidly over the coming years.
SPEED ISN’T EVERYTHING
So we all know that the best thing about 5G is its
huge speed advantage over 4G, but there’s more
to it than that. 5G is smarter. It offers lower latency
so its response times are speedier.
For a phone, that might mean a fasterloading webpage due to a lower ping, but for a
smartwatch that means exchanging data faster
– so, for instance, you won’t have to wait for map
updates or your step counter to sync up. In theory,
it’ll all just work automatically rather than leaving
you to stand around waiting for your data to sync.
“Wearables could also
look smaller, sleeker and
more fashionable”
5G can also handle more users simultaneously
than 4G because it can co-exist alongside other
wireless signals without any risk of interference, as
it operates on three different spectrum bands. For
a smartphone, that means it can operate at a
high enough speed to stream the latest Netflix hit
uninterrupted – but the next-gen mobile network
will also improve our wearables as well.
Theories suggest that 5G devices could have
two different modes available to them – a high-
speed, high-bandwidth mode for streaming
and downloading, and a low-power, long-life
mode for an increased battery life and improved
reliability. While few smartphone users will be
interested in the latter, a long and reliable battery
life lends itself perfectly to smartwatches and
wearable devices.
Through 5G, it’s possible to have thousands of
wearables connected within a small geographical
area without disruption. Something that will be
immediately appealing to those who live in busy
cities that can have congested airwaves.
THE CLOUD JUST GOT BIGGER
With the rise of 5G, no devices may need
substantial physical storage to be built into
them any longer. With faster connections, lower
latency and near instantaneous transmissions,
users could simply store all their apps and
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How 5G will transform
Wearables
files on the cloud rather than requiring their
smartphone or wearable device to include
physical storage.
That has a few benefits tied into it. By turning
your smartwatch or fitness wearable into a
gateway for your data, it means that they can also
become smaller.
Instead of having chunky devices that contain
lots of physical storage, manufacturers could
focus on providing more advanced sensors and
better batteries. Wearables could also simply
look smaller, sleeker and more fashionable –
something that’s particularly relevant in the case
of ring- or necklace-based trackers.
Most wearables are able to track how
far you’ve run, your current heart rate, and
your location, but all of these features can be
somewhat inaccurate at times.
With more nano sensors built into them, we
could benefit from sleek-looking wearables that
are also highly accurate, right down to being
Battery life has always been
a sore spot for wearables but
5G could change that
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able to measure body temperature or other vital
signs. For the avid runner, this could mean no
longer needing a heart monitor strap as well as a
smartwatch, for example.
The idea of wearables that can work as your
own personal trainer or doctor is far more likely
with 5G too, especially if it frees up storage space
and makes the reams of data they would need
capture more accurate.
SMARTER USE OF
SMALLER TECHNOLOGY
More space for a better battery, in conjunction
with 5G’s more efficient use of power, could
also go some way to reducing the smartwatch’s
biggest obstacle up until this point – its limited
battery life.
Smaller wearables in the future may also
lead to a growth in smart clothing. Smart
clothing already exists, but it’s limited in
scope and popularity currently. 5G and the
How 5G will transform
Wearables
“5G has the potential to massively change how we utilise
wearable technology”
implementation of wearable antennas within
the material of clothing could be exactly what’s
needed to boost the popularity of smart clothing.
It might sound like science fiction right now but
a recent paper has suggested that 5G antennas
could be manufactured from conductive threads
and adhesives.
So what’s next for wearables and 5G?
Smartwatches and fitness trackers have come a
long way in a short space of time. It wasn’t that
long ago that smartwatches relied on users to also
have their smartphone with them at all times.
Now, you can easily spend the day with just
your smartwatch on your wrist and you won’t
miss out on key features like making contactless
payments or tracking your exercise. That’s
important if manufacturers want wearables to
continue to be popular.
Right now, smartphones are seen as an
essential part of daily life, but wearables and
smartwatches are usually just a welcome ‘bonus’
to those that can afford them. 5G has the
potential to change all that.
If 5G technology is able to reduce the size of
wearables while enhancing the battery life, that
could be exactly what’s needed to convince the
general public that smart technology deserves a
place on their fingers, wrists, or neck.
Therefore, 5G has the potential to massively
change how we utilise wearable technology –
simply put, it’ll be fascinating to see what the first
few 5G wearables offer.
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© Shutterstock
Smart homes
5G will make your home smarter, faster, and better
Much has been said about 5G being the future for
mobile technology. After all, it’s the natural next
step after 4G and promises to be substantially
faster than anything we’ve seen before.
We’re not just talking about incremental
speed boosts either, given that 5G will be, on
paper, 100 times faster than standard 4G. So
far, that seems to be the case, but how will it
help the average user?
Particularly in the case of the smart home, 5G
technology has the potential to revolutionise. That
is, if you buy into the hype and speculation that’s
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rampant while we wait for more 5G to reach more
towns and cities.
The smart home is an environment a
growing number of us live in – a household that,
besides possessing laptops and smartphones,
also contains IoT (Internet of Things) gadgets,
from smart speakers like the Amazon Echo to
smart light bulbs and smart locks, right down to
all-in-one gadgets like the Google Home Hub.
Connected devices are a great way of
streamlining how you do things around the
home, but they are limited too, thanks to speed
How 5G will transform
Smart homes
restrictions and other issues. Could 5G be the
saviour that makes the smart home a more
appealing proposition to all?
FASTER AND MORE EFFICIENT
SMART DEVICES
It’s important to know that 5G isn’t just faster. It’s
also vastly more efficient in how it approaches
things. It offers lower latency so its response times
are speedier and it’s also generally smarter.
It can handle more users simultaneously than
4G due to its ability to co-exist alongside other
wireless signals without any risk of interference.
5G operates on three different spectrum bands,
which means it can be as fast as it needs to be,
depending on the device that’s connecting to it.
That frees up capacity for users in busy areas and
reduces slowdown at peak times.
The downside? Higher band spectrums need
a clear and direct line of sight to the relevant mast
to work as well. That means cities will need to
install more 5G masts compared to the number
that were installed for 4G. Potentially, we may all
need some form of antenna or hub in our homes
to get the most from the service.
However, being able to cope with so many
different connections at once is a huge advantage
for 5G. Wireless connections are consistently
under demand from many different sources all
at once and becoming overloaded with different
users and devices is a often hefty bottleneck for
receiving a high quality service.
Take a look around your home. How many
devices already use a wireless connection in
some way? It’s likely that your TV, games consoles,
smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, and laptops
all depend on a strong wireless connection to
work effectively.
But what about if you add a smart speaker
or hub to the mix? Or a smart light bulb system?
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How 5G will transform
Smart homes
Or locks? The list is near never-ending nowadays,
with even large appliances like refrigerators or
microwaves coming with smart home technology
built-in.
During setup, many of these devices create
their own Wi-Fi network before switching over to
the main home network. Others rely on Bluetooth
for the early stages of setup.
In either case, 5G can provide a more
consistent form of service, consolidating setup
and ensuring that things are easier to get started.
It’s the kind of thing that can make smart home
technology far more accessible and more
intelligently designed, thereby encouraging more
users to embrace IoT.
Low latency is another way in which 5G could
improve smart homes significantly. In the case
of security camera systems like Ring and Nest,
every millisecond counts. Being able to view
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what’s going on outside your home is useful
but only if the response rate means the pictures
update rapidly.
A 5G connection means a theoretical
response rate of 1ms or 2ms compared to a
home broadband connection of 10-20ms (at
best). Instantly, it makes a security system more
attractive to the concerned homeowner.
Overall, 5G could be far superior to a home
broadband connection. Faster, theoretically more
reliable, and even potentially cheaper – however,
there are issues to work through first.
WAVING BROADBAND GOODBYE
There are conflicting reports as to what 5G
means for power consumption. While it’s
more energy-efficient in principle, as we have
mentioned above it also requires more masts to
work effectively.
Smart homes
How 5G will transform
5G will greatly reduce latency
on devices to as low as just a
few milliseconds
Like with any new technology, it’s also likely
to have a knock on effect on the battery life
of portable devices like 5G smartphones and
wearables; it’s something that will take time,
possibly a few years, to improve.
There’s also the fact that you’ll need to
replace your current smartphones and gadgets
to be able to use 5G. That’s less of an issue for
smartphones as many of us upgrade regularly,
but swapping out smart home systems and
infrastructure isn’t for the faint hearted – or for
anyone counting their pennies.
It’s reasonably likely that for a time, 5G will
co-exist alongside existing home broadband
setups. Base stations are key here, with homes
potentially having a 5G hub alongside a
hardwired broadband solution. That means
increased reliability in the home (all-important
when even your lighting depends on your
internet connection), as well as eventually
waving goodbye to the need for a landline.
This also gives users time to adapt to 5G, slowly
swapping out older devices for new ones that
support the new protocol.
At the more commercial end of the scale, the
future can be seen a little through the eyes of
Huawei’s plans for the InterContinental Shenzhen
hotel in China: currently in the midst of a makeover,
it’s set to be the world’s first 5G smart hotel. That
means continuous 5G coverage for users, but also
things like 5G-powered ‘welcome robots’, cloud
gaming, virtual-reality rowing machines, and the
ability to seamlessly stream 4K movies.
Everyone likes a speedy internet connection
and one that enables them to do more. 5G looks
set to make smart homes even easier to set up
and live amongst than before – it’s just going to
take a little time and adaptation to get there.
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How 5G will transform
Movies
Movies
Get used to a world of portrait-first video
Have you ever tried to stream a video on the bus?
You know how it is: the latest Marvel movie trailer
has just been posted by your friend on Facebook,
and you don’t want to wait until you get home to
see what all of the fuss is about. So you hit the link
and… hope for the best.
If you’re lucky, the video will play without a
problem over 4G, but if you’re unlucky, you could
quickly see the action paused, as a circle of dots
tells you Spider-Man is currently buffering. And
when it does play, you can’t really work out what’s
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happening because the action has turned into a
low-resolution mess of coloured blocks.
The problem with 4G is that sometimes there
just isn’t enough bandwidth. Your download
speeds are being shared with everyone else, so if
too many people are trying to connect in the same
area, your connection can become unreliable.
But, luckily, the solution is just around the
corner. Over the next couple of years 5G is going
to continue to grow and transform our mobile
video experiences.
How 5G will transform
Movies
“Over the next couple of years 5G is going to continue to
grow and transform our mobile video experiences”
For a start, watching video is going to become
a lot more reliable, particularly in terms of
download speeds. As 5G hype builds, this means
you can expect to see lots of crazy claims about
how you’ll be able to download full HD movies in
just seconds.
Though it will be significantly faster than 4G,
5G will probably never live up to those claims,
simply because you will still be sharing the
connection with everyone else in your local area.
But don’t worry: 5G is still expected to
be at least 20 times faster than 4G – and the
benefits go beyond speed. 5G uses parts of
the electromagnetic spectrum that will mean
signals are better at penetrating buildings – so
you can expect a more reliable connection when
indoors. If we’re lucky, we may even be able to
get a reliable signal when travelling through more
remote areas on train journeys.
The other major boon is with regards to
latency – this is the combined round trip speed at
which your device can both upload data to and
download it from the internet. This will be most
significant for gamers who need fast response
times when playing online games like Fortnite,
but it will also make watching video better too,
as there will be less lag between hitting play on a
video and it actually playing.
DOWNSTREAM EFFECTS
What’s perhaps more interesting though is to
consider the second-order consequences from
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How 5G will transform
Movies
Sony’s Xperia range was one of the first to feature
21:9 displays to allow for widescreen viewing.
this technological shift – not just how 5G will
make downloads faster, but how it could change
our behaviour.
For example, today if you’re planning to watch
some Netflix or catch up with Amazon Prime
Video, you have to plan ahead and download
what you intend to watch on to your device
ahead of time to get the best experience.
With 5G and near ubiquitous connectivity,
streaming will become the default option and
you’ll be able to trust that the bandwidth and
connectivity will be available when you need it.
It also goes without saying, that 4K streaming
over the air should also become routine, which
will be just in time for 4K screens on phones to
become commonplace.
Of course, 5G isn’t just going to change us:
it’s going to change where we get film and TV
from too, and upset the industry in the process.
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It’s going to accelerate the process of unbundling
and ‘cord cutting’, as the idea of watching TV will
be further divorced from the need to have Sky or
Virgin Media in the UK, or Comcast or Verizon in
the US. After all, why would we want to pay for
bundles when apps will let us download what we
want specifically over 5G?
Given the bandwidth 5G enables, it is likely
that, just like how many millennials have never
had a landline phone, future generations may not
even bother getting a broadband connection for
their home.
PORTRAIT MODE
5G could also have a really big impact on the
types of content we consume. For example, with
ubiquitous connectivity, will we be producing
more video content ourselves than ever? Will
Hollywood films find themselves challenged
How 5G will transform
© Eva.Stories
Movies
by our friends’ live streams, or the hordes of
‘influencers’ creating YouTube videos?
The lines between games and film could
also continue to blur. Following the success
of Bandersnatch, 2018’s interactive episode
of Netflix’s Black Mirror, and the subsequent
interactive Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs
the Reverend, there has been a lot of excitement
around the possibilities of branching narratives.
But as CNET argued in 2018, this may only be
the start. In the 5G world, we won’t be watching
video on dumb screens – our phones have
other sensors built into them, like a camera and
gyroscope. What if films could watch us watching
them, and adapt the experience based on how we
react? 5G’s increased bandwidth and connectivity
could make this viable for big-budget films.
And perhaps strangest of all, the actual shape
of the pictures we watch could change too. If
we’re consuming more video content on our
phones, then it stands to reason more content will
be produced with phones – and not just TVs – in
mind. This could lead to more professional quality
film designed for portrait mode.
In fact, there are already some exciting
examples of this, and one of the most striking
is Eva Stories. This is a film that is premised on
the question of what would it be like if a girl had
Instagram during the Holocaust?
This might sound like a silly idea, but the
project takes its subject seriously, and presents
an entire narrative experience, educating viewers
about the horrors of World War II, telling the story
entirely through Instagram Stories that rely heavily
on video.
We think of social media today as being trivial
or disposable. But it stands to reason that as we
consume more content using 5G, filmmakers will
start to take phone viewing more seriously.
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How 5G will transform
Augmented reality
© Getty Images
Augmented reality
5G could be the key to unlocking AR’s potential
We all know by now that 5G is going to be a
big deal. In fact, it’s rather difficult to imagine a
modern industry that won’t be positively affected
by 5G’s arrival.
When it comes to augmented reality, however,
5G looks set to be more transformational than
most. Indeed, 5G could prove instrumental in
augmented reality finally hitting the mainstream.
Let’s first clarify what we mean when we
talk about ‘augmented reality’. AR, as it’s more
commonly known, overlays virtual information
onto a live view of the real world. While virtual
reality (VR) creates a completely enclosed, selfcontained 3D virtual world that a person can fully
58
immerse themselves in, AR seeks to enhance – or
indeed augment – our perception of the physical
environment around us.
Augmented reality is already firmly embedded
in our culture, from the heads-up displays (HUDs)
in a fighter pilot’s cockpit to the live selfie effects
of Snapchat and Facebook. But 5G’s arrival heralds
a whole new wave of deeply integrated, highly
social AR experiences.
Statista estimates that the combined value
of the AR market will rise from $5.91bn in 2018
to $198.17bn by 2025. And it’s not a coincidence
that this rise will coincide with the continuing
expansion of 5G networks.
How 5G will transform
Augmented reality
Above: Facebook utilises AR in its Messenger app
AUGMENTING REALITY
As we’ve hinted at already, augmented reality
isn’t a new or cutting edge technology. We
already have the means to create convincing
AR experiences, but it’s an extremely hardwareintensive process.
Embedding virtual components in a real world
view requires powerful processors, sharp cameras,
a range of advanced sensors, and some serious
software smarts. In short, the best AR apps crunch
a lot of numbers.
What’s more, that data needs to be rendered
in real time in order to produce a convincingly
smooth and responsive AR experience. Immersion
is everything with AR, to the point where any
performance shortfall can ruin the experience.
The huge amount of data being processed in
real time means modern mobile AR applications
are very localised, essentially ‘offline’ affairs. Not only
does this necessitate powerful mobile devices, it
also limits the scope of the AR experiences.
“Immersion is everything
with AR, to the point where
any performance shortfall
can ruin the experience”
Our existing 4G networks simply don’t have
sufficient capacity to bear the weight of more
connected or shared AR experiences, nor do
they have the required low latency – that is, the
time between an input and data being sent in
response – to be truly responsive in real time.
WHAT 5G BRINGS TO THE AR TABLE
It’s here that 5G will be able to take AR to the
next level because, as already pointed out, the
next generation mobile network will massively
increase capacity and lower latency. ABI
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How 5G will transform
© Google
Augmented reality
Research predicts that 5G will provide a “10x
increase in throughput, 10x decrease in latency,
and 100x increase in traffic capacity” over 4G,
which will mean that “5G will not only improve,
but will also be a requirement for some of the
most exciting AR and VR applications”.
In such an environment, existing AR
applications would be able to offload much of
the intensive processing to the cloud, opening
AR applications out to new, smaller, more energy
efficient and cheaper form factors.
While the Google Glass project appeared to
be halted several years ago (it wasn’t, but we’ll
come to that), the prospect of a truly wearable,
permanently accessible AR device hasn’t gone
away. It was just hibernating until the technology
could be refined, part of which involves a
sufficiently capable mobile network.
The nature of AR applications will also grow
more sophisticated, with truly shared and social
real-time augmented reality experiences. The
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transmitting of AR-enhanced live events could be
one example.
This synergy between AR and 5G will also
expand the potential for remote-control drone
and robot operation through enhanced HUDs
and improved haptic feedback. Indeed, this
lofty concept of the so-called ‘tactile internet’ is
expected to kickstart the much vaunted fourth
industrial revolution.
That might sound lofty, but cutting edge
researchers such as South Korea’s Electronics and
Telecommunications Research Institute predict
just such an eventuality. In January 2019, it was
announced that ETRI had developed a 5G-based
technology that would enable AR applications to
send and receive packets of data at speeds that
match human perception.
“We will see robots, cars and all other
machines connected to the internet all around
us,” said ETRI team leader HwanSeok Chung.
“[The] tactile internet will enable humans and
How 5G will transform
Augmented reality
machines to interact with each other even from
far away.”
AR AND YOU
Talk of the tactile internet is all well and good,
but you might ask how 5G-enhanced AR is set to
benefit the average user over the coming years.
The first thing to note is that the framework
is there for massive advances in everyday AR
applications. Both Google and Apple, gatekeepers
to the two biggest smartphone platforms, are
investing heavily in AR. Apple announced its ARKit
framework in June 2017, while Google announced
its own ARCore in August 2017.
AR computation has been a core
component of multiple generations of iOS and
Android devices now, and there are countless
AR-enhanced applications on their respective
platforms. But the two companies have huge
plans beyond the current status quo.
It has been widely expected that Apple will at
some stage include macOS and iOS support for
AR headsets, although this has been conspicuous
in its absence the last few OS upgrades.
It’s also long been rumoured that Apple
is working on its own set of AR glasses, which
could prove a huge boost to AR’s mainstream
acceptance. You only need to see the company’s
dramatic effect on the adoption of smartphones,
tablets, and smartwatches for evidence of that.
For its part, Google has been steadily ticking
over in the background with its pioneering
© Google
“Google and Apple, gatekeepers to the two biggest
smartphone platforms, are heavily investing in AR”
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How 5G will transform
© Microsoft
Augmented reality
“Facebook has also been steadily bringing AR features to its
vast network of social platforms”
Google Glass project after an initial failed public
run. The latest update comes in the form of
the business-focused Glass Enterprise Edition 2,
which now runs on Android and is powered by
Qualcomm’s AR-focused XR1 chipset.
On the software front, the company
announced at Google I/O in 2019 that it was
adding 3D augmented reality models to its
search results.
On top of this, Facebook is known to be
investing heavily in AR. Having played a major
part in the related resurgence of VR through
its Oculus Rift platform, the company is known to
be working on its own advanced AR glasses.
Facebook has also been steadily bringing AR
features to its vast network of social platforms
ever since 2017, from Messenger and Instagram
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to Facebook ads. Through AR Studio, it’s also
allowing third parties to get in on the act.
Microsoft has its own long-standing AR
hardware project in the form of HoloLens, which
has yielded some of the most impressive (though
alas not commercially available) AR applications of
the current era – including an augmented reality
version of Minecraft.
Talking of Minecraft and AR, Microsoft is
working on the Minecraft Earth mobile game,
which could well prove to be the true breakout
moment for AR gaming.
AR is set to enter a whole new phase of
mainstream acceptance in industry, on our
phones, and through a whole new class of
personal devices – and 5G is going to be at the
very heart of the revolution.
How 5G will transform
Augmented reality
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How 5G will transform
Virtual reality
© Oculus
Virtual reality
The next-gen of mobile connectivity is the boost VR needs
There are lots of advantages to 5G: it promises
to be faster than 4G, it’ll cover wider areas,
connections will be more stable and latency will
decrease. And this advanced connectivity will
have a significant impact on technology and how
we use it across a range of sectors.
However, if we had to put our money on an
industry that could benefit the most from 5G,
and may even need it to truly take off, it would be
virtual reality (VR).
Although there have been reports over the
past few years that VR headset sales aren’t hitting
targets, VR is proving to be more and more
popular – and this is just the beginning.
According to recent stats, the VR industry as a
whole is growing exponentially year upon year. In
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2019 the market size was estimated to be around
$6.2bn, which could rise to a predicted $16.3bn by
2022 worldwide.
VR is big business and is expected to play
a major role in a range of industries, such
as entertainment, training, education and
healthcare to name just a few. But, although the
technology has huge potential, and is already
being used in some of these settings, there
are still technical issues that hold it back from
reaching its full potential.
The good news is that many believe VR’s
most significant obstacles could eventually be
overcome by 5G, as it will bring low latency,
super fast speeds and stable connections to
headsets that will make VR experiences more
Virtual reality
How 5G will transform
© Oculus
The Oculus Quest was the
first all-in-one VR gaming
system – no wires required
“The good news is that many believe VR’s most significant
obstacles could eventually be overcome by 5G”
accessible, more reliable, and, most importantly,
even more immersive.
THE CURRENT REALITY
OF VIRTUAL REALITY
Virtual reality, often referred to as VR, is a kind
of technology that allows you to fully inhabit
virtual spaces. But we don’t mean getting lost in
a book – the VR we’re talking about here requires
you to put on a device, in this case a VR headset,
and experience a virtual environment that’s been
created by computers.
Most VR headsets are fitted with a display,
stereo sound, sensors and more, to believably
place you inside a virtual environment. What
that environment is will depend on what you’re
using VR for. VR headsets are typically considered
entertainment devices, and you can use them to
play all kinds of games, as well as watch TV and
movie content. But VR offers more than that.
There are big plans to make social VR as
commonplace as social networks, allowing you
to connect with friends and family wherever
they are. And, increasingly, documentary VR
experiences are being made, as well as arts-based
content. There are also a range of applications
for VR that go well beyond what you’d likely be
using a VR headset for at home, including training,
education, logistics and healthcare, just to name
a few.
Given there are so many uses for VR, analysts
have high hopes for the future of the industry.
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How 5G will transform
Virtual reality
© Sony Interactive Entertainment
Astro Bot: Rescue Mission is just
one of many successful titles
available for the PSVR
But, although headset sales are now on the rise,
VR still hasn’t reached its full potential of being a
must-have device in every living room.
There are many reasons why VR hasn’t gone
‘mainstream’ yet. One is that the technology has,
“For VR to really work,
devices need to run fast,
have lots of storage and low
latency. 5G networks could
be just what they need”
historically, been expensive. And, although recent
releases are entering the market at significantly
cheaper price points, they’re not cheap cheap.
It’s not just the price, either. It’s also a risky
purchase for most people. Many need convincing
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to splash their cash on this kind of tech, as well as
to strap a device to their faces to have fun rather
than pick up a games controller or switch on their
favourite Netflix show.
Another reason, however, is that connectivity
has been lacking. The main premise of virtual
reality is that you experience a virtual world or
space. For that to really work, devices need to be
running fast, they need high levels of storage and
low latency. That’s why 5G networks could be
just what VR needs for it be for everyone – and
enjoyed everywhere.
WHAT 5G CAN DO FOR VR
“The impact of 5G on the immersive industry
may seem small, but in fact, it could be one of
the biggest,” says Sol Rogers, CEO of REWIND, the
immersive content studio.
One of the most obvious benefits of 5G to
VR, as well as other industries, is that connectivity
will be more stable. Right now, VR apps can
How 5G will transform
Virtual reality
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How 5G will transform
© Oculus
Virtual reality
“5G is expected to provide a ten times decrease in latency
over 4G, which could significantly improve VR experiences”
be interrupted by network performance. 5G,
however, will be able to handle many more
devices at the same time, meaning your
connection doesn’t suffer.
Although this is good news for better
gaming and entertainment experiences, it
could also be what VR needs to become a more
valuable proposition. It would mean it could
be used across more industries, like healthcare
or engineering, which would require the most
stable connections before they could begin to
rely on VR technology.
5G will also lower latency, which essentially
refers to the time taken between a request
being made and a response being received. This
ultimately means VR would have significantly
better responsiveness.
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The most important thing to remember
here is that for VR to do what it says it can do,
immersion is important. For a virtual world to
feel like the real world, everything needs to
match up, whether that’s the way images are
presented, the speed of the world moving as
your head does or visuals that fool your senses
into thinking you’re really there. It has to be fast
and it has to be realistic.
Low latency is what’s necessary for VR
experiences to run smoothly – if there’s
significant lag it can lead to motion sickness,
as well just unrealistic-looking VR experiences.
As we’ve mentioned already, 5G is expected
to provide a ten times decrease in latency
over 4G, which could significantly improve the
consistency of VR experiences.
Additionally, existing VR apps would be able
to offload intensive processing to the cloud,
which would enable companies to create
smaller, more energy efficient and even more
affordable hardware.
“The core technology (bandwidth and latency)
will enable off-device computing,” explains
Rogers. “So, your device could be low powered
and thus low cost, but still be the front-end to
a full size and scalable machine in the cloud or
at the edge. This means that the graphical and
computational power available to create amazing
experiences for all of us will increase exponentially
[as a result].”
GOING MOBILE
The advent of 5G comes at a great time for the VR
industry for another reason: it’s already becoming
more mobile.
Headsets have, typically, been connected
by a wire to a computer, which is how they’re
powered and fed data. This meant that, for
some, they were a confusing proposition,
needed extra equipment to work and meant
that experiences designed to make you feel free
and place you in another environment were very
physically restraining.
However, that’s slowly changing. Newer
headsets like the Oculus Quest and businessdriven HTC Focus bring high-quality VR to
more mobile form factors. These can work
well without wires and additional equipment
to power them, as well as sense movement
without external sensors.
5G’s potential to serve up fast, reliable
connectivity wherever you are appears to be
a match made in heaven for this new era of
headsets. Imagine VR at the park or just not
having to rely on a Wi-Fi connection – that really
feels like the future.
The great thing about 5G is it will increasingly
be able to enhance the delivery of virtual
experiences and this will, hopefully, allow VR to
reach its full potential.
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© HTC
The game Batman:
Arkham VR puts you, quite
literally, in Batman’s shoes
© Rocksteady Studios
How 5G will transform
Virtual reality
How 5G will transform
Mobile gaming
© Getty Images
Mobile gaming
Console-grade graphics on the go thanks to 5G? Surely not!
With download speeds that beat most home
broadband transfer rates, and 4G speeds by
around ten times, speed is definitely the name
of the game when it comes to 5G connectivity.
But as it was also built with more ‘lanes’ than 4G,
it can handle peak hour data usage that little bit
better, so users should be able to enjoy a more
consistent service.
Given what we know about 5G so far, there
are some very obvious ways that it could benefit
mobile gamers.
For starters, game downloads will be
quicker. With games like Injustice 2 and Valkyrie
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Profile clocking in at over 1GB, most gamers
today will likely wait until they’re connected to a
Wi-Fi network before downloading them. This is
primarily to save data, but another factor is that
the download takes longer over 4G and would
wreak havoc on your phone’s battery.
5G looks set to increase the size of data plans
too. Take EE for example. It currently offers 5G on
a range of data packages – from 10GB per month,
to unlimited. The 4G packages meanwhile, range
from 250MB through to 200GB per month.
With 5G resulting in more data and faster
downloads, dropping 1GB and a few seconds of
How 5G will transform
Mobile gaming
LATENCY PART ONE: MULTIPLAYER
MAYHEM
Lower latency is a less obvious benefit of higher
speed mobile internet, but its implications are
game-changing.
Latency is the time between an action, and
that action being registered. So, when you write
with ink, the latency would be the time between
the ink leaving the pen and marking the paper.
When it comes to online gaming, latency is the
speed with which a command is registered and
actioned on your screen. The lower the latency,
the better.
5G will mean incredibly low latency gaming,
which will be handy when multiplayer blasting,
especially as mobile gaming tournaments
and eSports continue to scale new heights of
popularity, and a focus on high-performance
connectivity becomes a differentiator between
champions and runners up.
LATENCY PART TWO: THE NETFLIX
OF GAMING
If you think back to the rise of 4G, it coincided
with Netflix hitting stratospheric levels of
© Razer
time spent downloading shouldn’t leave a 5G
gamer’s data plan or battery breaking a sweat.
Additionally, many mobile games today
also require an in-game internet connection.
Tracking your score, fleecing you for gems and
other in-app purchases, or logging you into a
battle royale arena to compete against other
mobile warriors Fortnite-style – all these require a
connection and have historically resulted in long
wait times.
In a nutshell, the main, obvious benefit of 5G
and more speed can be summed up in three
words: no more waiting.
“Dropping 1GB and a few
seconds of time spent
downloading shouldn’t
leave a 5G gamer’s data
plan or battery breaking
much of a sweat”
adoption – and that’s no coincidence. Wireless
watching gained popularity when great quality
content became ‘streamable’ over fast mobile
internet speeds with 4G.
How does that compare to gaming and
5G? Well although streaming takes up more
bandwidth, 5G speeds are fast enough to
support it.
There are two methods of streaming games.
The first involves streaming from one device,
whether it’s a console or a PC, to another. The
brunt of the processing is undertaken by the
primary device, which plays the game. The
secondary device just receives a video feed and
registers controller input commands.
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How 5G will transform
Mobile gaming
“You could have console-quality games, streamed directly
to your phone’s 2K or 4K screen at full resolution”
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How 5G will transform
Mobile gaming
Currently, PlayStation’s Remote Play and Steam Link are available
for mobile and let you stream from your console or PC to your
Android or iOS device with ease, provided your network connection
can hack it.
The second way to stream games is more exciting when it
comes to 5G. Games are run on remote servers, and streamed
to your screen just like Netflix. Subscription services like this are
available today – Nvidia’s Geforce Now, Sony’s PS Now or Google
Stadia for example – but all require fast, home broadband to play
back smoothly.
What 5G will do is take these services out of the home, and
into… well, anywhere there’s a 5G signal. Just think – you could
have console-quality games, streamed directly to your phone’s 2K
or 4K screen at full resolution.
Hook up a Bluetooth controller and a 5G connection will enable
your commands to reach the server and relay back to your display
in milliseconds. While this might not be good enough for some
professional competitive eSport gamers, it should suffice for the
vast majority.
There are other benefits to streaming games too – your
smartphone doesn’t need particularly powerful internals as it won’t
be processing a bunch of 3D objects. This also means it won’t get
as hot and might not run out of battery as quickly as if were you
playing a game it was powering.
In addition, streaming games would remove the need for
powerful hardware altogether, democratising console-grade
gaming. Providing it has 5G, your budget phone in 2022 could play
the same quality games a flagship could.
Above: The Google Stadia controller
THAT’S NOT ALL
Mobiles aren’t the only on-the-go gaming gadgets set to benefit
from 5G. Laptop gamers should be reeling at the prospect of faster
mobile internet. Online multiplayer games tethered to your phone’s
5G connection will deliver imperceptible levels of latency, so
wherever you are, you can crack out your gaming laptop and blow
things up with your friends.
A subscription model, made possible by streaming gaming
services, could also save gamers money when compared to buying a
library of games – something services like Apple Arcade already do.
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How 5G will transform
© Sony
Mobile gaming
Meanwhile, 5G would also enable streaming
virtual reality movies and games, which have
higher bandwidth requirements. This is because
two images need to be streamed for VR, one to
the left eye and one to the right eye, and both of
these need to be high-resolution to deliver highquality experiences.
“In the future, awesome
gaming features could
come to phones that cost a
fraction of the price”
Mobile gaming hardware is also set to reflect
5G’s advancements. We’ve already seen the likes
of the Asus ROG Phone 5, Xiaomi Black Shark
4 and Nubia RedMagic 5G refine hardware to suit
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gamers’ needs, with features like front-firing stereo
speakers, left and right triggers, pressure sensitive
displays and lightning fast 120Hz refresh rates.
These all pack flagship internals though, and cost
a fair whack.
In the future, these awesome features could
come to phones that don’t need powerful
internals so they’ll cost a fraction of the price
and might not need to run Android or iOS. And
these devices potentially might not even be a
smartphone at all!
5G could create a new breed of handheld
gaming consoles – essentially 5G shells that
receive console grade games on a monthly
subscription basis.
Does this sound far-fetched? Well these are
just a handful of predictions based on what
we already know. But one thing is already
abundantly clear: whatever happens, 5G will
certainly play a key part in the next revolution of
mobile gaming.
How 5G will transform
Mobile gaming
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How 5G will transform
© EE
Sports
Sports
Better for fans, better for broadcasters
The goal of every athlete is not just to win, but
to continually grow faster and stronger, so that
they may keep on winning in the future. But this
isn’t just the case in sports. As we speak, every
player in the mobile industry is gearing up for
their biggest competition yet: becoming the
champion of the 5G market.
5G will, of course, be a lot faster and stronger
than the 4G we’re used to – offering pretty mindboggling speeds that could conceivably be up to
100 times faster. But other improvement it offer
is in terms of latency – the time it takes for your
device to communicate with the network.
To demonstrate the transformative effect
this could have, the US network Verizon and
infrastructure provider Ericsson put together
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a rather clever demonstration: they gave two
American football players VR headsets and
mounted forward-facing cameras on top.
“5G could be used to offer
attendees access to action
replays from multiple angles”
They then sent the video from the cameras
over 5G back to the 5G base station, and then
from the base station back to the VR headsets –
so they would still see what their eyes would have
seen naturally, but it would be sent over 5G first.
How 5G will transform
© Verizon
Sports
The result? It turns out that 5G is so quick, it’s possible to throw
and catch a football, even relying on images being transmitted to a
base station and back – while still maintaining millisecond precision.
FASTER CONNECTIVITY FOR FANS
This clever demo, however, is not the only thing that 5G and sports
have in common. In fact, 5G looks set to transform the entire sports
viewing experience.
First, let’s look at stadiums and arenas. The most annoying
thing that can happen at large events is the mobile networks not
working, because thousands of people are all in the same place and
are trying to connect to the same mobile antenna.
The good news is that with 5G, this should become a thing
of the past as the next-gen mobile network won’t just support a
denser number of connected devices, but has also been designed
to support millimetre wave frequencies, which mean venues will
be able to place more, highly directional 5G equipment to ensure
everyone can maintain a decent connection.
Having everyone connected in their seats is not just
convenient for social media platforms like Facebook. This sort
of connectivity could also be used to offer attendees access to
© EE
Above: 5G will provide a stable connection
among a wider number of devices at once
Above: VR can transport fans into the
stadium to experience games virtually
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Sports
© Tukewood Media
How 5G will transform
Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium is the first to have a dedicated 5G network.
action replays from multiple angles – making
up for the one thing that TV can do better than
being at the game in person.
On a more practical level, 5G could also end
the nightmare of having to queue for ages at the
bar at half time, as ordering drinks and snacks
from our seats using our phones could become
the norm.
Even more ambitiously, Verizon believes
we may not be too far away from 5G-powered
augmented reality experiences – we may soon
be able to hold up our phones and have the
players name and stats float above them as they
run around the pitch. The line between FIFA on
your PlayStation 5 and real life is going to get a
little blurry.
SLICE OF THE ACTION
Viewing away from the stadium could also
improve with 5G. Most obviously, the increased
bandwidth and reduced latency should put an
end to buffering, even when you’re trying to
catch the game while on the bus. But its reliability
could go far beyond this, thanks to a controversial
new technology that’s baked into the 5G standard
called network slicing.
At the moment, when you use the internet, all
traffic is treated equally – whether you’re sending
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emails, doing some important work, or rotting
your brain watching TikToks.
Network slicing, however, could enable phone
networks to pick and choose what gets priority,
and syphon off slices of the available bandwidth
for particular favoured services.
Most obviously this will help the emergency
services, but it is surely inevitable that as phone
networks compete to win over customers,
reliable, slice-off access to live sports will prove
and attractive proposition. So we can hopefully
expect no buffering whatsoever.
The benefits of 5G and network slicing go
beyond the immediate consumer proposition too.
In fact, 5G could make it easier for TV networks to
film and broadcast games – meaning there could
be plenty more sporting content to watch, even if
your team is in the lower leagues.
How? As reported by SportsPro, BT Sport and
EE carried out an intriguing trial, sending a team
to film a football match between non-League UK
football titans Braintree Town and Bromley FC.
What made it unique wasn’t the diminutive
stature of the teams playing, but the fact that
the pictures weren’t edited and produced
from the stadium as in traditional football
broadcasts. Instead, they were sent back over 5G
to BT Sports’ headquarters in London, where a
How 5G will transform
© EE
Sports
“The challenge [to traditional sports] from 5G is that it might
make another type of sport more attractive: esports’”
production team was able to turn the raw images
into a TV show. If the production team can all stay
in one place, it means they can produce multiple
broadcasts on the same day – or even at the
same time.
In other words, 5G could massively reduce the
number of people needed to make live sports
broadcasts happen – which could, in turn, result
in more sport to watch; perfect if you support a
smaller sports team.
But there is one last twist: in a world of 5G
ubiquity, will people actually want to watch more
football or other traditional sports? The challenge
from 5G is that it might make another type of
sport more attractive: esports.
Esports have experienced huge growth over
recent years thanks to social media and services
like Twitch popularising the players and the
clans. According to one estimate, last year 400m
people watched esport content – a number that
is expected only to continue rising, with stars like
Ninja and the “FaZe” clan commanding millions
of dollars in sponsorship and advertising revenue,
just as easily as the biggest footballers do.
With 5G, broadcasting and watching esports
is going to be even easier. No longer will there
be any constraints on where we can watch from
– so don’t be surprised if we start to see players
broadcast from their mobile devices, rather than
from their bedrooms.
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How 5G will transform
Education
Education
Faster, smarter and more interactive – a new generation of learning
5G has tremendous potential to transform the
way we communicate, with live high-definition
video streaming and much faster download
speeds, but it also has uses far beyond what
we currently do with our phones and tablets.
It could also reach into and transform the
classroom and lecture theatres.
Universities and training facilities are likely to
be some of the first adopters, helping broaden
their students’ horizons and improve public
safety. After that, schools are likely to follow
close behind, giving students a more immersive
experience inside the classroom and preparing
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them for the faster and more connected future
that awaits them.
© Versa / Fitbit
Cutting-edge tech can be a fantastic learning
tool, making subjects more engaging, helping
children who struggle to learn new concepts
from textbooks, and bringing education into
the homes of children without easy access to a
physical classroom.
Thanks to 5G, universities will be able to open
their doors to students worldwide, broadening
their horizons, and training will be revolutionised
in careers like medicine. Sharing knowledge and
learning new skills has never been easier.
How 5G will transform
Education
“With 5G, teachers will be
able to share rich virtual
experiences without classes
leaving their seats”
Children will be able to learn at their own pace
within an environment that suits them. Meanwhile,
teachers will have more time to spend engaging
their students, thanks to improved connectivity
allowing more Internet of Things (IoT) devices to
be embedded in classrooms – for example sensors
that register each child automatically as they arrive
in class, eliminating the time-consuming process of
taking a register by hand.
All images © Shutterstock unless otherwise stated
The classroom is always a real proving ground for
developing technology, and understandably so
– what’s cutting-edge now will be mainstream
by the time today’s kids enter the workplace.
Coding, for example, has quickly become as
essential as reading, with children writing simple
programs before their seventh birthdays and
VR headsets becoming as commonly seen in
classrooms as textbooks.
VR can make lessons more immersive
and keep students engaged, but it involves
transmitting huge amounts of data – particularly
if headsets are wireless – which results in lag that
can be distracting or frustrating.
With 5G, teachers will be able to share rich
virtual experiences with their classes, exploring
the solar system, the human body, the structure
of a flower and the ocean floor without them
leaving their seats.
© Getty images
5G IN SCHOOLS
Teachers will even be able to share the same
experience with students who are outside the
classroom itself – in isolated or rural communities,
for example.
Since the 1950s, children in the Australian
outback have been able to receive lessons from
a virtual classroom called the School of the
Air. Lessons were initially taught via two-way
radio, with assigned projects and written work
completed under the supervision of the child’s
parent or guardian.
Today, students and teachers can interact
via video link, but patchy connectivity means
it’s not unusual for the feed to cut out part way
through. With only an hour a day for interaction,
any technical issues can result in a lot of lost
learning time.
5G will bring more reliable and stable internet
connections – even in areas that currently suffer
from poor coverage – helping the School of the
Air bring its lessons into the 21st century.
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How 5G will transform
Education
Teachers will be able to interact with
students for longer, safe in the knowledge
that the line is stable, and share interactive
experiences with their virtual classes rather than
just video – all with practically no latency. It will
also be easier for students to interact with one
another, helping them socialise with children
their own age.
5G IN UNIVERSITIES
5G will also be a game-changer for higher
education. Early trials are already taking place at
the University of Surrey, University of Bristol and
King’s College London using a 5G test network.
Once 5G is rolled out, students will no longer
be restricted by outdated and limited wired
campus networks, and will be free to take their
learning with them – from the lecture hall to the
library and beyond via reliable mobile connections.
Universities will also be able to create virtual
campuses for students studying part-time or via
distance learning – a boon for mature students
fitting their studies in around work and family.
Students will be able to ‘visit’ colleges elsewhere in
the world for special lectures and seminars using
zero-latency, high-resolution two-way video.
5G and the Internet of Things could also
make expensive degree courses more accessible
“Once 5G is rolled out, students will no longer be restricted
by outdated and limited wired campus networks”
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How 5G will transform
Education
in areas without ready access to costly labs and
training equipment. With fast mobile internet,
a medical student could not only attend
virtual lectures and seminars in real time with
other students; they could also perform virtual
dissections and procedures with guidance from a
real tutor.
5G’s superior bandwidth will enable the
transmission of haptic feedback, which could help
them ‘feel’ while performing a virtual operation,
and guide their hands as the work. Hyper-realistic
simulations like these could help them prepare
for work in a real hospital, and develop their skills
throughout their careers so we can all benefit
from better healthcare.
5G IN TRAINING
5G won’t just improve education for children
and students, either. It also has the potential
to transform training in all kinds of technical
professions as well.
Armed forces worldwide already use
advanced virtual cockpits to train fighter pilots.
The British Royal Air Force (RAF) has a state-of-theart training facility where pilots experience forces
up to 9G while flying three different virtual jets.
Commercial pilots use similar (albeit less extreme)
simulators, spending hours in VR before taking to
the skies
With 5G, pilots wouldn’t be limited to preprogrammed scenarios and locations. Instead,
training data could be captured and sent to the
cloud for processing, then new scenarios and
challenges could be sent back to the simulator as
a direct response to their flying.
The result would be a more realistic
experience, better training, and safer flying for
everyone in future.
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How 5G will transform
The workplace
The workplace
How the next generation of wireless technology
will empower frontline workers
The rollout of 5G, the fifth generation of wireless technology
networks, promises major advancements not only to our personal
lives with tech like wearables, but also to many business sectors,
including autonomous shipping and transportation, smart cities and
the entire workforce.
The 5G conversation often leads us to think about new
applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), whether it’s consumer
gadgets, smart refrigerators, enterprise businesses, AI-powered
analytics or personal digital assistants. However, there is another
side to this ultra-fast and powerful network that can open up new
economic opportunities for cities, organisations and the individual
worker. 5G has the potential to transform our rapidly-changing
workforce by enabling near-universal employee inclusivity,
increased engagement and heightened business efficiencies.
Above: With fast and reliable connections
available anywhere then it could be
possible to work from home or a cafe
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Without cables, employees may no
longer feel tied down to their cubicles
“5G has the potential to transform our rapidly-changing
workforce by enabling near-universal employee inclusivity”
5G is poised to leave a lasting impact on the
workforce as a whole, but perhaps most notably,
it will democratise hiring opportunities for
companies based outside of major tech hubs, and
empower frontline workers, who are often left out
of the corporate culture.
CITIES WITHOUT TOP-OF-THE-LINE
TECH INFRASTRUCTURE
Not all cities are created equal, at least from a
communications infrastructure and connectivity
standpoint. Major tech and innovation hubs
such as Silicon Valley, New York and Boston
are able to accommodate a wealth of workers
and companies because they were built from
the ground up with a modern IT and network
infrastructure already in place.
5G has the potential to rapidly update the
internet “infrastructure” of any city by delivering
immediate access to faster data speeds, more
bandwidth and consistently reliable connections.
This empowers companies to expand their
footprint across more markets, recruit talent
effectively anywhere, while providing more
flexible work options for employees.
THE (EVOLVING) LABOUR MARKET
In addition to driving economic development
and opening up new cities as potential corporate
hubs for leading organisations, 5G will further
accelerate the workforce’s move away from the
traditional 9-to-5 work day.
The “employ me” generation, categorised as
those who prefer to work where and when they
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© Startup Stock Photos / Pexels
How 5G will transform
The workplace
How 5G will transform
The workplace
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How 5G will transform
The workplace
“It won’t only provide
technical improvements like
greater reliability and lower
latency; it has the potential to
have a much larger impact”
feel the most productive, is reaching critical mass
in the workforce at a rapid rate. Our data shows
that 89% of workers say flexible working should
be how we work, not simply a benefit. With the
technical ability to work from a location of their
choice, companies empower their employees
with the flexibility they seek, and in turn, can make
tangible improvements to employee engagement
and business efficiency, resulting in higher rates of
productivity and employee retention.
This is great news for executives looking to
boost their bottom line, but it also expands the
pool of potential new employees. Organisations
can now look to hire the best worker - regardless
of where they are based - instead of the worker
that is based in their headquarter’s city or trying to
drive top talent towards urban areas.
WORKERS ON THE FRONT LINE
Beyond democratising cities, 5G has the power
to democratise opportunities for workers of all
backgrounds and industries. When adopting
new 5G-powered applications, company leaders
should not only focus on the potential business
impact, but also on how the tech will affect their
culture. For companies with frontline workers,
those who deal directly with customers or are
directly involved in making a product, a major
challenge is keeping those employees engaged
and connected to the larger organisation.
For example, the trucking industry deals with
a high level of turnover due to challenges with
communication as the drivers make cross-country
trips. For these distributed workers, 5G combined
with communications technology opens the
door for a stronger connection to the company
while also allowing for richer communication and
collaboration amongst their peers and their base
office. These new opportunities have historically
not been possible with the legacy tools and
processes used by most companies today.
For other frontline workers dealing directly
with customers, patients or vendors, 5G’s reliable
connectivity ensures that workers can connect to
their partner network while on-the-go. Instead of
being chained to a desk, or only able to work in
optimal locations, workers are enabled to better
utilise smartphones and tablets to accomplish the
same work that is traditionally done on a laptop or
desktop computer, at the “speed of reaction.”
Like most of the industries it will support, 5G
is focused on working better, faster and smarter.
It won’t only provide technical improvements
like greater reliability and lower latency; it has the
potential to have a much larger impact. As we
think about the next wave of our economy and
the future of work, 5G represents a technological
milestone on par with AI and IoT in terms of
its impact on the way we empower the next
generation of digital workers.
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Intro
Buyer’s guide
Are you a 5G convert? Then you’ll want to pick your
ideal network and phone – and we’re here to help
It should be clear by now that 5G will be totally transformative.
So we’re not surprised if you’re champing at the bit to get 5G in
your area and get your hands on your first compatible phone.
Fortunately, 5G rollouts have come a long way in the last
18 months: many cities and indeed towns across the US and
UK now have some degree of access. Meanwhile, 5G-ready
phones have gone from a fringe curiosity to something even
the most reticent brands – *cough* Apple *cough* – have
embraced. In light of this, we’ve assembled a handy guide to
help you pick the best network and phone for you.
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Intro
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Buyer’s guide
All images © AT&T unless otherwise stated
AT&T
AT&T
All the info you need on the AT&T
rollout of 5G and 5G+ in the US
AT&T’s senior vice president Chris Penrose describes the company’s
5G network as a chocolate chip cookie. The main cookie dough
represents low-band 5G while the chocolate chips represent
the 5G+ millimeter-wave cities “sprinkled in across the country.”
Much of AT&T’s coverage is known as 5G Nationwide. Initially,
the network said 5G Nationwide wouldn’t offer 5G speeds much
© Versa / Fitbit
beyond 4G - that’s because this broadest 5G network is based on
low-band signals. The faster high-band mmWave (millimeter wave)
technology is also rolling out as well, so speeds will be a lot higher.
This faster network is called 5G+ by AT&T.
So while the network is getting better all the time, it seems AT&T
would rather market Nationwide 5G rather than 5G+ for now. But
as we mentioned mid-band networks do form a large chunk of
the cookie. Like Verizon, AT&T is counting on C-Band spectrum to
catch up with T-Mobile and it plans to build out capacity for the
first 40Mhz of that spectrum this year with more to follow over the
next three years. It’s working with Nokia as part of a five year deal
Above: AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas
has some 5G experiences that guests can
try out
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AT&T
“5GE stands for 5G Evolution and it is available in over 500 US
towns and cities. ”
between the two companies to boost indoor and
outdoor 5G coverage.
“AT&T is committed to bringing the power of
5G to businesses and communities across the
nation, and our C-Band deployments with Nokia
will help add 5G capacity where it’s needed,” said
Igal Elbaz, Senior Vice President of Wireless and
Access Technology AT&T.
In a shareholder note, AT&T Chief Executive
Officer John Stankey said:
“AT&T’s expected capital expenditures of
around $24 billion per year from 2022 to 2024
builds on its existing position as one of the largest
investors in digital infrastructure and connectivity
in the United States. This investment will allow
AT&T to meet substantial, long-term demand for
connectivity and expectations for its 5G C-band
network to cover 200 million people in the U.S. by
year-end 2023.”
WHAT IS 5GE?
As we mentioned, AT&T originally prioritised
5GE for customers back in 2019. 5GE stands for
5G Evolution and it is available in over 500 US
towns and cities. The approach here still makes
sense. Many consumers still aren’t ready for full
5G networks yet, so why not give them a better
service in the meantime before they’re eventually
convinced to go for a full 5G or 5G+ service? The
problem is that 5GE could be seen as misleading
- it’s certainly pure marketing, any way you look
at it.
Other networks aren’t keen and Sprint even
took out a full-page advertisement in the New
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AT&T
York Times to say that “AT&T’s fake 5G claims are
deceiving consumers”. Analyst OpenSignal has
even suggested that AT&T LTE is often slower than
other networks with LTE Advanced.
The issue is that 5GE is not really 5G at all - it’s
known as LTE Advanced from other vendors so,
yes, it’s still 4G.
Buyer’s guide
AT&T is working with Nokia to roll out C-Band
spectrum (mid-range spectrum) over the
coming years and has signed a five-year deal.
Nokia’s US C-Band portfolio includes support
for both standalone 5G networks and nonstandalone networks.,
“Nokia is ready to support the launch of 5G
AT&T 5G CITIES
AT&T’s main 5G network - Nationwide 5G - is a
low band network which is now available in more
than 14,000 towns and cities across the US. AT&T is
simply referring to this network as “5G” rather than
5GE or 5G+.
AT&T’s faster millimeter wave 5G+ network
is available today in limited parts of at least 35
cities. As with other networks using millimeter
wave, speeds on this network will reach in
excess of 1Gbps. These locations include Atlanta,
Austin, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis,
Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville,
Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma
City, Orlando, Raleigh, San Antonio, San Diego,
San Francisco, San Jose and Waco. AT&T Stadium
- home of the Dallas Cowboys - has also been
5G-enabled.
Courtesy of Joey Kyber / Unsplash
Atlanta is one of the cities getting
AT&T’s faster 5G+
“AT&T’s faster millimeter wave
5G+ network is available
today in limited parts of at
least 35 cities”
services into this valuable new spectrum on our
customers’ timelines by leveraging our powerful
portfolio of C-Band solutions and by being the
first to demonstrate a live C-Band network in
the U.S. in 2020. Our flexible and comprehensive
portfolio will enable AT&T to enhance its 5G
services in areas across the nation,” said Ed
Cholerton, President of Nokia North America.
Like other networks, AT&T reported a massive
upsurge in traffic around the coronavirus
outbreak, largely driven by home working. AT&T
CEO Randall Stephenson told CNN’s Brian Stelter
on the Reliable Sources programme that: “We’re
seeing some signs of stress. We’re having to go
out and do some of augmentation of network
but right now the network is performing
quite well.” Although he didn’t go into details,
‘augmentation’ probably means opening up
additional capacity. Stephenson added that the
network would “come out of this crisis” before
saying it would also “continue to invest in 5G and
new technology.”
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T-Mobile
Buyer’s guide
T-Mobile
Thanks to the Sprint merger, T-Mobile is growing fast
T-Mobile 5G is rolling out now across the US and is taking
advantage of different versions of 5G technology to help it improve
coverage and capacity. Similar to AT&T, T-Mobile has also rolled out
a lot of low-band 5G, which isn’t great for speeds. That so-called 5G
Extended Range network was started in 2019 and is essentially 4G
with a few enhancements to make it quicker. T-Mobile rightly calls it
a “foundational layer of its 5G network” and while that’s true, it’s not
really full 5G.
It does have the benefit of huge coverage though, covering
more than 200 million people and more than 1 million square miles
across the US - over 8,000 cities. One thing’s for sure - T-Mobile is
gaining customers at some speed. Figures from the fourth quarter
of 2019 point towards a million ‘postpaid’ customers; people who
pay a monthly bill. 77,000 pay-as-you-go or prepaid customers were
also added over the period. T-Mobile remains the third biggest
network in the US, despite it having absorbed the Sprint network in
a protracted deal that closed during early 2020. After the acquisition,
Above: Mike Sievert took over as CEO of
T-Mobile in 2020 after the merger with
Sprint was completed
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All images © T-Mobile
T-Mobile
“It does have the benefit of huge coverage though, covering
more than 200 million people”
it has just over 100 million subscribers across
the US. According to the network, it has added
53 million users since 2013. Not surprising when
you have had 27 successive quarters with over a
million new users added.
Among the 5G test projects that T-Mobile
has carried out, the network has been using
5G-embedded cameras to virtually put fans on
the baseball field in order to catch the action
from the players’ point of view and go behind
the scenes. They’re mounted on players hats and
catchers masks - T-Mobile says this is the first
time that 5G embeddable cameras have been
integrated into a professional sports league event.
Each camera features a real-time HD stream.
T-Mobile has also worked with Major League
Baseball to create an augmented reality app
for fans with bonus stat views for T-Mobile 5G
customers. In a measure of how T-Mobile sees
itself, CEO Mike Sievert delivered the keynote at
the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January
2022. Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, CTA: “The
pace of innovation has accelerated over the
last 18 months, and the rapid roll-out of 5G will
only increase the momentum. There’s so much
excitement in this space and for the first time, we
welcome Mike Sievert to our keynote stage to
share more about T-Mobile’s vision for fuelling
5G innovation.”
T-MOBILE 5G CITIES AND COVERAGE
The 5G Extended Range network covers 8,300 US
towns and cities. It is still able to get to speeds of
around 450Mbps if conditions are at their best,
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T-Mobile
although expect significantly slower speeds than
that generally. Essentially, it is like a quicker form
of 4G LTE.
T-Mobile’s Ultra Capacity network is different.
It’s a millimeter wave (mmWave) network similar
to that which we’ve seen from the other US
providers - but not providers in Europe. It provides
the fastest speeds, but has poor range. T-Mobile
says it is upgrading 1,000 cell towers a month for
this, covering 100 million Americans. However,
it is really only in some areas of the very largest
cities at present. For its 5G Ultra Capacity network,
T-Mobile is using 28 Ghz mmWave (millimetre
wave), just as Verizon is. That means excellent
download speeds, but a more difficult blanket
rollout. That’s because the shorter wavelength
signals don’t travel so far and are easily blocked
in urban areas or by external walls - so you
need loads of 5G nodes. You only need to look
at T-Mobile’s current coverage maps to show
the issues around mmWave deployment - it’s
extremely patchy.
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So as we mentioned previously, T-Mobile has
also opted to use low-band 600Mhz spectrum.
The low-band spectrum can also carry 5G signals
inside. Before the T-Mobile launch of low-band
5G, its competitor Sprint was leading the way and
it’s one of the reasons that Sprint and T-Mobile felt
they would be a good fit by merging, which they
duly did.
SPEED AND RELIABILITY
In May 2021, RootMetrics released its first-ever 5G
Scorecard, which shows the race between the
US’s 5G networks. Although AT&T was best for
Everyday 5G download speeds, T-Mobile offers
the broadest Everyday 5G availability of any carrier
according to the tests. RootMetrics tested the
125 most populated metropolitan markets in the
United States.
T-Mobile holds a significant lead in the race for
Everyday 5G availability, according to RootMetrics,
recording the highest Everyday 5G availability in
44 out of 65 total cities tested to date.
Buyer’s guide
T-Mobile
T-Mobile’s coverage
in mid-2020. Today
is has over 100
million subscribers
across the US
“The 5G Extended Range network covers 8,300 US towns
and cities”
T-Mobile was also recently been hailed as the
most reliable 5G network in the US according to
consultancy Umlaut. The network had the best
overall score of the US networks with an overall
707 points out of a maximum of 1000. The tests
were carried out using the Samsung Galaxy
S21 Ultra. In a clear ranking of how the network
rollout is panning out, Verizon scored second
overall with 632 points with AT&T bringing up
the rear with 599 points.
In terms of reliability, T-Mobile also achieved
the highest score with 664 out of a maximum
of 800 points. In contrast, Verizon ranked second
with 560 points and again AT&T was third with
520 points. “umlaut’s report is just the latest to
prove customers and businesses alike can count
on T-Mobile 5G to deliver a fast and reliable 5G
connection in more places than anyone else,”
said T-Mobile’s Neville Ray.
“While the other networks play catch up, we’ll
keep adding more 5G coverage and capacity to
bring a transformative experience to customers
across the country.”
Ookla also recently rated the network as
the fastest 5G network in the US. The testing
- carried out during the first quarter of 2021 saw the network clock 82.35Mbps download
speeds, followed by AT&T at 76.6Mbps and
Verizon with 67.24Mbps. Ookla’s study also
found that T-Mobile customers spent more time
connected to a 5G network, than customers on
rival 5G networks.
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Buyer’s guide
T-Mobile: Sprint merger
T-Mobile:
Sprint merger
What exactly did T-Mobile add to its 5G network
when it merged with Sprint?
Sprint 5G was live in 8,900 US cities, but then things changed
drastically, including the disappearance of the Sprint name itself.
That’s because Sprint’s merger with T-Mobile was approved
by regulators in 2020 and has seen off a legal challenge from state
attorneys general citing reduced competition and potentially higher
prices for consumers.
Sprint adopted the T-Mobile brand after the merger was
completed on 2 April 2020. It’s been a long time in the process –
the merger was first announced nearly two years prior to it being
approved and had been talked about for a lot longer than that, even
as long ago as 2014.
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T-Mobile: Sprint merger
“Some analysts suggested that Sprint needed the merger
[with T-Mobile] to happen in order to survive”
One thing is for sure – Sprint has been seen
as a weak prospect through the process. Some
analysts suggested that Sprint needed the merger
to happen in order to survive; it reported losses
for the three quarters straight and has significant
debt, which T-Mobile doesn’t. Sprint was also
losing subscribers and lagged behind as the
fourth biggest player.
Judge Victor Marrero said in his judgement
that “the overwhelming view both within Sprint
and in the wider industry is that Sprint is falling
farther and farther short of the targets it must hit
to remain relevant as a significant competitor”.
German firm Deutsche Telekom owns nearly
42% of the new T-Mobile and ARM-owner
SoftBank around 27%. However, it seems Softbank
is happy for Deutsche Telekom to be in control
and has granted it proxy voting rights meaning it
effectively controls the firm.
We’ve outlined more about the merger and its
background in the following pages.
SPRINT’S 5G NETWORK
Sprint called its 5G service True Mobile 5G. That’s
quite a mouthful and although it doesn’t have
another 5G service to differentiate from, it’s likely
that Sprint was trying to say something about
other networks with its message – notably AT&T’s
5GE (which is, essentially, 4G LTE Advanced) and
others using low-band 5G.
Sprint, as part of T-Mobile’s network, has
expanded coverage in many of its key locations
meaning that approximately 305 million people
are now covered across around 8,900 cities in
the US.
For business, Sprint always maintained that 5G
technology will change the way that businesses
do business. It had said that we’re about to see
a revolution because this is the first generation
of cellular networks that can be “configured for
specific needs and use cases”.
It was particularly talking about the
possibilities for IoT (Internet of Things) devices, but
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T-Mobile: Sprint merger
also said it opens up possibilities for businesses
to use cellular they previously haven’t thought of.
Note that if you’re a Google Fi subscriber, Sprint
announced at a year ago that it would provide
that service with 5G wireless services in the future,
but we don’t yet have any more details than that.
Google Fi uses cellular services from various
networks and hops between them seamlessly,
but it’s interesting to know that 5G will be coming
to the service.
MERGER WITH T-MOBILE
Sprint’s $26bn merger with T-Mobile was in the
works for two years and was narrowly approved
by the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) and the Department of Justice – which
went so far as to mandate that the new
combined company will need to divest some
spectrum to Dish to enable it to launch a new,
fourth competitor in the market. Sprint needs to
divest its Boost Mobile subsidiary to Dish to make
this happen.
But then the merger came up against a
problem; a multi-state lawsuit in an effort to
block it, essentially suggesting that the efforts to
reinstate a fourth player in the market through
Dish don’t go far enough and that the merger
would mean higher prices for consumers.
On 12 February 2020, the federal judge in the
New York Court gave the merger the go-ahead.
According to Fortune, the key testimony
was from Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, who was
convincing in his ambition to create a new,
fourth player in the mobile market to effectively
replace Sprint.
As well as selling spectrum to Dish, Sprint-TMobile will also have to host Dish as an MVNO for
a time to enable it to get a mobile business off
the ground while it builds its own network.
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Now the merger has gone ahead, the
company will be called T-Mobile – the company
has been dubbed “New T-Mobile” in publicity.
The combined company is still the third biggest
network behind Verizon and AT&T.
Prior to the merger, T-Mobile had around
46 million users, with Sprint around 33 million
(according to Statista). However, the Boost Mobile
loss has seen Sprint lose around 7-8 million users.
The combined company has had to promise
to stick to some stringent targets. The company
will have to roll out a 5G service to 97% of the
US within three years including rural areas and
pledging that, within six years, 90% of the US
population will have data speeds in excess of
100Mbps, with another 9% having 50Mbps.
SPRINT 5G COVERAGE
Sprint’s 5G network has now been combined with
T-Mobile’s 5G offering, meaning that T-Mobile will
control additional mid-band spectrum.
Sprint originally began its 5G rollout with
Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Kansas City in early
2019, but the network expanded this to nine cities
as of late August 2019, with Los Angeles, New York
City, Phoenix and Washington D.C. having Sprint
5G services in certain areas. This covered more
than 16 million people across those nine cities.
Prior to the merger, it had been expanding
its coverage within the nine target cities. For
example, in New York City, Sprint expanded its
Buyer’s guide
T-Mobile: Sprint merger
coverage further from the initial 30 square miles
across Midtown and lower Manhattan.
As well as New York, Sprint had achieved
enhanced coverage in Los Angeles, Washington
D.C. , Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and
Houston. The specific areas covered by Sprint and
folded into T-Mobile’s network included:
•
Atlanta, from College Park to Alpharetta, and
from Marietta to Lawrenceville, including
Peachtree Corners.
•
Chicago, from the historic IL-64 in the north
to Stevenson Expressway in the south, and
as far as California Avenue in the west to the
periphery of Lake Michigan in the east.
•
Dallas-Fort Worth, including downtown
and north Fort Worth and Euless, stretching
across to north and northwest Dallas,
including Plano, Richardson and Garland,
and South Dallas.
•
Houston, from downtown Houston to
Memorial City Mall and City Centre Plaza,
uptown Houston and northwest and south.
•
Kansas City, from downtown to Overland Park,
Kansas, and other places in the KC Metro area.
•
•
•
•
Los Angeles, from Marina del Rey to
Downtown L.A., and West Hollywood
to Culver City. It also eventually included
parts of Torrance, Southgate, Lancaster and
Buena Park.
New York City, in parts of Manhattan from
Central Park to the southern tip, the Upper
West Side and Harlem, the South Bronx;
parts of Queens and Brooklyn; Hempstead,
Long Island as well as Union City, Paterson,
Lodi and East Orange in NJ.
Phoenix, across the greater Phoenix metro
area with service in parts of Phoenix, Tempe,
Scottsdale, Glendale, parts of ASU, Chase
Field and Mesa.
Washington, D.C., around the U.S. Capitol,
the White House, the National Mall, Foggy
Bottom, Downtown, Penn Quarter/Metro
Center, Dupont Circle, West End and
Logan Circle. New additions include Fort
Dupont and Deanwood in D.C., parts of
Blandensburg and Fairmont Heights in
Maryland, and parts of Bailey’s Crossroads.
and George Mason University in Virginia.
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Verizon
Verizon
The Verizon 5G network is offering improved
coverage in several larger cities
The Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network was the first 5G
technology service to launch globally. The network started rolling
out 5G with Verizon 5G Home Internet at first, subsequently
launching the first commercial 5G mobile network globally in April
2019. It’s now live in more than 2,700 US cities, which isn’t as many as
you might expect given it was first to launch.
Verizon’s CEO Hans Vestberg stated that the corporation was
targeting at least 50% coverage of the US in 2020. The network is
committed to focus on 5G in the high-band mmWave spectrum.
Then, Verizon followed rivals T-Mobile and AT&T to launch
nationwide low-band 5G (which doesn’t provide much better
speeds than 4G and uses dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS). This
enables Verizon’s 5G service to run simultaneously with 4G LTE on
multiple spectrum bands.
“All of our spectrum is capable of deploying 5G, so it’s not like
we can’t do what others have been doing,” said Verizon’s executive
vice president Ronan Dunne.
Above: Verizon hopes to roll out its 5G
Home Internet in more locations sometime
in 2021
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All images © Verizon
Verizon
“On the basis of what we’ve seen so far, that
doesn’t provide any differentiation in either speed
or coverage relative to Verizon.”
The network provider also enabled its
5G service in 13 NFL stadiums in time for
NFL Kickoff Weekend 2020 including Bank of
America Stadium, Empower Field at Mile High,
CenturyLink Field, Ford Field, Gillette Stadium,
Hard Rock Stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium, MetLife
Stadium, M&T Bank Stadium, NRG Stadium,
Soldier Field and U.S. Bank Stadium.
The Verizon 5G service is available in selected
areas of each stadium – the network says it is
concentrated in parts of the seating area but
service may be available in other areas.
Verizon has also partnered with Wi-Fi provider
Boingo to bring its 5G Ultra Wideband service
indoors to places like airports, office buildings,
stadiums and other public spaces.
It also partnered with Disney for the
premiere of Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker where
it demonstrated streaming footage (over 5G of
course) with actors from another location acting
“The potential of Verizon
5G Ultra Wideband
combined with mobile edge
computing to transform
healthcare is limitless”
as two Sith troopers. Those wanting to take part
in the demo at the premiere afterparty could
interact with the actors in real-time, even though
they were several miles away. Another demo
took place in New York to show people in Times
Square what it was like to be on the red carpet
for the Oscars 2020 ceremony 2,500 miles away in
Los Angeles.
And Verizon has also joined up with Emory
Healthcare to test 5G applications in the
healthcare industry. “The potential of Verizon 5G
Ultra Wideband combined with mobile edge
computing to transform healthcare is limitless,”
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Verizon
said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon. “With 5G,
doctors should be able to do things like create
holographic 3D anatomical renderings that can
be studied from every angle and even projected
onto the body in the OR to help guide surgery.”
VERIZON 5G COVERAGE
After criticism from users, media outlets and rivals,
Verizon has now released coverage maps of all
the cities it is currently offering 5G services in.
T-Mobile has been gleefully making
fun of Verizon’s 5G rollout with a campaign
targeting Verizon’s limited rollout that’s been
concentrating on mmWave locations rather than
a wider low-band rollout. “In the 5G era, they’re
losing their network crown,” said T-Mobile CTO
Neville Ray, in a 2020 blog post.
“More than 60 locations
have received Verizon 5G
Ultra Wideband”
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“They’ve painted themselves into a
technology corner with a 5G strategy focused on
millimetre wave. They bet on the wrong horse,
and now they’re trying to advertise their way out
of it.”
But Verizon is also now using lower band
technology to bring a lower spec service to a
wider audience.
Verizon’s mmWave network – known as 5G
Ultra Wideband – is only available in selected
areas of each city – so while speeds are great,
coverage isn’t as yet. More than 60 US locations
have received Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband since
the network launched.
Mind you, it’s difficult to get away from the
thought that 5G Ultra Wideband coverage is still
in its infancy because of the sparse coverage
and you can see why Verizon might have been
reluctant to release the maps previously. Verizon’s
lower band offering is called 5G Nationwide. It
uses dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) meaning it
can run alongside 4G LTE. Verizon says the service
is currently available for more than 230 million
people across 2,700 cities in the US.
Buyer’s guide
Verizon
Even though Verizon has rolled out mmWave 5G services in
60 cities so far, the coverage is hit-and-miss to say the least and it’s
concentrated in very specific areas for now.
Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network – as it is calling it – uses
the high-frequency mmWave (millimeter wave) technology also
favoured by AT&T and T-Mobile. Of course, one of the big benefits
of 5G is vastly reduced latency and increased speed, and it’s here
that you see the difference with mmWave.
In a comparison of 5G network speeds last year by Opensignal,
Verizon took the top spot, beating the competition by some margin.
Indeed, the Verizon 5G network has a peak speed of 390Mbps faster
than the closest US network. Verizon’s videos show speeds in excess
of 1Gbps at times, although you should expect speeds in the low
hundreds of Mbps as normal, faster in specific areas.
Availability was another story. mmWave has a problem – while
it’s great for close-together cell sites in large cities, it’s not so
good for a rollout involving more rural areas where Verizon’s 5G
Nationwide service has to take a front seat. And mmWave services
work mainly outdoors at the moment. We’ve even heard about
being able to get 5G on one side of the street and not the other.
“Since we began building 5G, we have had a first-mover advantage,”
said Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon. “We are more
than a year ahead in building and selling mmWave with our 5G
Ultra Wideband service and still the only company with commercial
Mobile Edge Compute.“
Above: Verizon teamed up with Wi-Fi
provider Boingo to bring its 5G Ultra
Wideband service to public spaces
Below: Verizon’s 5G coverage in Manhattan
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EE
EE
The network has brought 5G to the most UK towns
EE 5G was the first to launch in the UK, with the UK’s second-biggest
network clearly intent on being in the box seat for customers
wondering what network to choose. BT now owns EE, of course,
and BT Mobile is actually an MVNO working on EE’s network. As
part of this, BT has also launched a combined 5G mobile and home
broadband plan called BT Halo which offers unlimited data and
calls on mobile and at home, something also offered by Vodafone
Together. BT has also launched Hybrid Broadband, normal fibre
which is backed up by cellular, but this is 4G not 5G at present.
EE has now stated that it aims to have 5G across at least 90
percent of the UK by 2028 (measured by landmass) and it will do this
by combining low band spectrum into the mix.
Indeed, it has already begun to roll this out. The network is set to
launch its new 5G core network in 2023 at which point EE says that
its 5G network will cover around half of the UK’s population.
EE has form for using big-name music stars to promote 5G - it
held a gig with Stormzy on the River Thames to promote the launch
of its 5G network and, of course, EE also sponsors the Glastonbury
Above: EE’s 5G is available in more towns
and cities than any other network provider
in the UK
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© EE
EE
“EE demonstrated the robustness of its 5G network by
streaming a 360-degree augmented reality Bastille concert”
Festival each year. EE also streamed a 360-degree
augmented reality (AR) Bastille concert from
Birmingham New Street station to Edinburgh and
Liverpool. Members of the public in the latter two
cities could watch the gig on devices provided
by EE reps including the Samsung Galaxy Fold
5G and some AR glasses. AR visuals surrounded
the band, adding to the experience. And recently,
EE used the Galaxy S21 and its 5G installation at
Wembley Stadium to stage the world’s first 5G AR
Foosball tournament between Gareth Southgate
and other well-known football figures.
EE also launched an ad showing a slightly
over-the-top depiction of what’s capable with 5G,
shaving Lucifer actor Tom Ellis being shaved by a
robotic arm on top of Mount Snowdon. The catch
is the arm is being controlled by a barber 250
miles away in London, who just happens to be
joined by EE advert regular Kevin Bacon. The ad is
designed to showcase a situation where you’d be
in a bad way if your network let you down.
EE has been named as the UK’s top network in
independent tests by RootMetrics. The UK-wide
aggregate median download speed was over
twice as fast as that of any other UK network at
58.8Mbps. However, what’s more interesting for
us here is 5G performance. Here EE took top spot
in RootMetrics Everyday 5G rating. This is basically
a rating based on availability plus speed and
reliability. The network’s highest availability is in
Birmingham, where it covers just shy of 65 percent
of the city.
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Buyer’s guide
© EE
EE
“When EE announces it has switched on a new place with
5G, there must be meaningful levels of coverage there”
EE 5G COVERAGE
EE has 5G service in 160 UK towns and cities
currently. That’s not as many as some other
networks, though BT/EE consumer chief Marc
Allera says that other networks don’t have the
same level of coverage when they ‘claim’ a new
location has 5G. “When EE announces it has
switched on a new place with 5G, there must be
meaningful levels of coverage there, which we
assess with clear benchmarks and strict criteria
which need to be met.
“We could loosen our criteria like some
competitors; to be honest, it’s tempting, by doing
so we would reveal 5G is actually in around 200
unique locations across the UK. However, we
believe our claims should be as credible as our
108
5G is usable. We do not take our customers’
experience for granted.” In June 2021, EE turned
on 5G in a few more coastal locations as part
of its beefing up of connectivity across coastal
locations generally (mostly using 4G in places
like Blackpool, Bournemouth and Brighton).
Coverage remains fairly centred on built-up
zones and it’s always worth checking out the
EE coverage checker. 5G is also available at the
following public transport hotspots in London:
Euson, Waterloo, Liverpool Street, Charing Cross,
Highbury, Islington, New Cross Gate Overground
and Shoreditch High Street Overground. You can
also get 5G access in London’s Piccadilly Circus,
Clapham Common, and Hampton Court Palace
gardens among other places.
Buyer’s guide
© EE
EE
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Virgin Media O2
Buyer’s guide
Virgin Media O2
Despite launching later with a smaller slice of the 5G
spectrum, the network is rapidly gaining ground
While O2 was the third of the big four UK networks to go live,
it has a large customer base to preach the benefit of 5G – it
remained the UK’s biggest phone network serving over 25 million
connections. It’s aim was to have 50 5G locations live by the
summer of 2020. O2 hit the 150 milestone in mid-January 2021 and
today has nearly 200 locations live with 5G.
The near future is set to be interesting for O2 since its merger
with Virgin Media was approved by UK regulators in May 2021 and
the two organisations are now working to integrate themselves
in a joint venture. Virgin Media O2 - as the combined organisation
will be known - will look after around 47 million mobile, home and
business connections, including 41 million mobile connections.
Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, and José Maria Alvarez-Pallete,
CEO of Telefonica, commented: “This is a watershed moment in the
history of telecommunications in the UK as we are now cleared to
bring real choice where it hasn’t existed before, while investing in
fibre and 5G that the UK needs to thrive.”
Above: The O2 in Greenwich was an clear
choice to be one of the first places to be
included in the 5G rollout
Right: O2 initially rolled out 5G across the
UK’s capital cities as well as cities where
they had offices
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Buyer’s guide
Virgin Media O2 now has nearly 200 locations
live with 5G. O2 spent much of its pre-5G work
focusing on making its 4G network (which is, of
course, the backbone for 5G) as good as it could
be and said it was investing around £2 million a
day into its infrastructure.
If you take into account O2’s MVNO (Mobile
Virtual Network Operator) customer base
including Giffgaff, Tesco Mobile, Sky Mobile and
Lycamobile, O2 manages a total of 34.1 million
connections. O2 owns Giffgaff outright while
Tesco Mobile is a joint venture with Tesco). Tesco
Mobile has also now launched its 5G service in
the same locations as O2.
VIRGIN MEDIA O2 5G COVERAGE
O2 and Virgin may have merged, but O2 is
close to another mobile network - it has a longstanding network-sharing deal with Vodafone.
The pair’s agreement for the rollout sees 2,700
sites in 23 larger UK towns and cities keep
separate provision for each network. So while the
mast will remain shared, all the other equipment
will be separate. That’s presumably a matter if
control and also, possibly, ensuring each retains
a competitive edge. As 5G becomes the norm, it
will also help each to bring 5G services to areas
where it may not have been financially viable
otherwise. “We’re moving at pace with our 5G
© Getty Images
Virgin Media O2
rollout,” said Mark Evans, O2’s CEO. “5G offers
critical support to the UK’s digital economy,
supporting jobs and growth.”
The two networks again worked together
after the second UK 5G auction in early 2021 - the
two reached a deal to trade spectrum bands to
create more efficient blocks of spectrum for each
operator. “Large contiguous blocks support faster
speeds, lower latency and greener 5G services,”
said Vodafone and O2 in a statement. “The move
will, subject to approval from Ofcom, create a
contiguous block of 80Mhz for O2, and ensure
good proximity of Vodafone’s blocks totalling
90MHz of spectrum.”
Mark Evans, CEO of O2, added: “This year
O2 is investing more than ever in its network
to improve coverage and experience. Securing
contiguous blocks of spectrum is crucial to
harnessing the true power of 5G - we will have
the strongest indoor and outdoor connectivity
and an ultra-reliable frequency.
“O2 is a champion for coverage and reliability,
and remains committed to responsibly and
securely improving the network experience for
all our customers across the UK. This deal with
Vodafone is further evidence of our commitment
to customers and we’re hugely excited about the
possibilities of our 5G network.”
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Three
© Three UK
Buyer’s guide
Three
After something of a delay, Three’s UK 5G phone
network is now live
Three 5G was later than other networks to roll out in the UK, but
it is now neck-and-neck with other key networks in terms of the
number of locations covered, even if Three’s footprint in each
location is currently fairly modest. The network claims it now has
over a million 5G customers. Three also has a very limited home 5G
broadband service in operation.
Three has just undergone a refresh of its brand as it prepares to
do battle with other vendors in the competitive 5G market. There’s
a new tagline, too; ‘Life needs a big network’ and a new, warmer
colour scheme to go with it.
Three has the UK’s fastest 5G network because it currently
has more spectrum than the other UK operators. The bottom
line, however, is that the network believes it can “provide peak
mobile speeds of up to 2x faster than other telco operators due
to its substantial 5G spectrum holding.” However, the spectrum
allocations have been somewhat balanced out as a result of the
Above: Three UK is claiming it’ll have the
UK’s fastest speeds thanks to its spectrum
allocation.
Right: Three’s 5G is available in 154
locations across the country with more
expected to roll out soon.
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Buyer’s guide
Three
latest UK 5G spectrum auction in early 2021.
Three still added to its holding, by spending an
additional £280 million on low band allocation
(two 10MHz blocks).
Three says “this triples the amount of low
frequency spectrum [we] own and will have a
transformative effect on its customers’ experience
indoors and in rural areas. Three UK is in a fantastic
position to deliver a great network experience for
its customers now and in the future.”
The signs are that Three’s speed claims for its
network are true to their promise, with speeds
in the 600-700Mbps range in the fastest areas indeed, we’ve previously seen over 700Mbps from
one of Three’s top-end sites. You’ll be getting
an average of around 400Mbps in these areas.
However, keep in mind that you won’t get this
type of speed everywhere.
As we mentioned, Three was late to launch its
5G network in early 2020. This wouldn’t necessarily
have been noteworthy, except that the company
had taken out multiple-page newspaper ads to
boast about its service during summer 2019.
In November 2019, Three admitted the obvious
- its 5G launch wasn’t going to happen on time.
“There are a number of parts we need to put in
place to deliver our 5G experience: 5G equipment
on masts, the right backhaul transmission, as
well as the need to acquire the right planning
permissions from landlords,” said Three in a
statement. “Added to this we also need to move
all of our customer traffic onto the world’s first 5G
cloud core network.”
Three’s new cloud-based core network is
powered by Nokia.
THREE LOCATIONS
Three has now rolled out to a total of 154
locations. However, coverage remains very
limited in each of these areas - you can see
exactly where is covered on the Three coverage
checker. In some large towns and small cities
only one small area is covered (presumably from
a single mast) and this has caused BT/EE to say
that rivals will lose customer support because of
their claims.
However, Three UK says its 5G investment
is part of a £2 billion, 5 year programme to
deliver “the UK’s fastest 5G network”. Three
says it currently has 1300 5G sites. Part of this
investment is in connecting mast sites to highspeed, high-capacity fibre. 3500 sites have now
been upgraded to 10Gbps capable transmission
giving faster and more reliable 4G and 5G.
David Hennessy, Chief Technology Officer at
Three UK, said: “The investment we’re making
in our network and IT infrastructure is vital to
delivering on our promise of providing better
connectivity, every day for every customer.
Despite unprecedented challenges presented
by a global pandemic, our 5G and 4G rollout
is going strong and we’re making sure our
customer remains at the centre of every decision
we make.”
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Vodafone
© Vodafone
Buyer’s guide
Vodafone
With unlimited tariffs and roaming on 5G, the
network is looking to topple some of its rivals
Whereas once Vodafone could have been accused of resting on its
laurels, it certainly can’t be criticised for that now. It wants to be the
main 5G challenger to EE (instead of O2) and sees 5G (and unlimited
data) as a key part of that.
Vodafone 5G wasn’t the first 5G network to launch in the UK, but
it forced the pace with the introduction of unlimited tariffs. As Three
had them already, it laid down the competitive gauntlet for others
such as EE and O2.
The company was the first network to offer roaming on
5G. Although it’s restricted to Ireland, Spain, Germany and Italy
for now (and only in 5G areas in those countries, of course), it’s
clearly an area where Vodafone thinks it can lead. Coincidentally,
Vodafone says 5G roaming doesn’t yet work with the iPhone 12.
Vodafone was also the first to offer a 5G mobile and home
broadband option for both business and home users, called
Vodafone Together.
Above: Lewis Hamilton joins Vodafone for
its 5G launch at London’s Sky Garden
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Vodafone
Buyer’s guide
Vodafone offers a range of plans
that are meant to appeal to both
consumers and businesses
“Vodafone is also the first network to offer a 5G mobile and
home broadband option for both business and home users”
VODAFONE 5G CITIES AND TOWNS
Vodafone 5G coverage has grown significantly
since launch and the service is now available in
100 UK towns and cities, with more locations to
follow in the near future.
The full list is as follows: Aberdeen,
Alexandria, Ambleside, Aughton (Sth Yorks),
Basingstoke, Bebington, Belfast, Birkenhead,
Birmingham, Bishopbriggs, Blaydon, Bolton,
Bootle, Bournemouth, Bradford, Bristol, Bristol
Airport, Cardiff, Cheadle and Gatley, Cheltenham,
Chesterfield, Clydebank, Crawley (West Sussex),
Crosby, Dewsbury, Dinas Powys, Droylsden,
Dudley (West Midlands), Dundee, Eccles,
Edinburgh, Eston and South Bank, Felling,
Gateshead, Glasgow, Gloucester, Gosforth (Tyne
& Wear), Guildford, Hebburn, Helensburgh,
Horwich, Huddersfield, Huyton-with-Roby, Inner
London, Isles of Scilly, Jarrow, Kingston upon Hull,
Kingswood (Bristol), Lancaster, Leeds, Lisburn,
Liverpool, Llandudno, Long Benton/Killingworth,
Manchester, Mangotsfield, Middlesbrough,
Morley, Mosborough/Highlane, Newbury,
Newcastle upon Tyne, Newtownabbey, North
Shields, Oldbury/Smethwick, Outer London,
Paisley, Penarth, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Prescot,
Prestwich, Pudsey, Rawmarsh, Reading, Rochdale,
Rotherham, Salford, Sheffield, Shipley, Solihull,
South Shields, Southampton, Stockport, Stocktonon-Tees, Stoke-on-Trent, Stranraer, Stretford,
Sunderland, Sutton Coldfield, Swansea, Swinton
and Pendlebury, Tynemouth, Urmston, Wallasey,
Wallsend, Warrington, Washington, Whitley Bay,
Wolverhampton and York.
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Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
The best 5G phones
The best 5G phones deliver much faster downloads, lower latency and a lot more
The best 5G phones are hoping to deliver on the
hype we’ve been hearing about 5G long before
the new networking standard even launched.
With every major carrier having launched 5G
in some form, the focus is now on 5G-capable
handsets and whether it’s worth making sure
your next smartphone can connect to the new
networking standard.
The answer so far? You can get blazing speeds,
provided that you’re in an area with 5G coverage.
But 5G phones have more to offer than just
speedier downloads.
Initially, the best 5G phones offered
outstanding cameras, big displays and super-sized
batteries. That’s no surprise really, since many of
these phones are really just the best phones overall,
only with 5G modems included.
116
Price is becoming more of a consideration,
though, as phone makers start to offer 5G phones
that cost less than £600/$600. These don’t have
the premium features found in flagship phones,
but they also won’t put a £1,000/$1,000 dent in
your wallet.
If you’re in the market for a smartphone this
year, the time is right to start looking at a 5G phone,
especially as lower-cost 5G phones are starting
to appear and more 5G flagship phones arrive.
Moreover, given by the time you read this 5G
iPhones should have finally arrived on the scene,
there’s no longer any reason fans of particular
ecosystems can’t get involved.
5G networks are only going to get faster and
more extensive, so it’s worth making sure your next
phone can make the most of them.
Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
The best
5G phone
right now
How we test 5G phones
To test phones with 5G
connectivity, we take them
out into the field to measure
download speeds with the
Speedtest.net app. When possible,
we compare that speed to a
comparable phone on the same
wireless network to try and gauge
the improvement that 5G has to
offer. We also take note of how
the phone performs when 5G
coverage isn't available.
Because so much of that
5G performance hinges on the
wireless network and not the
phone itself, though, we give
greater weight to the criteria by
which we judge all phones. We
run an array of benchmarks on
every phone – both synthetic
benchmarks as well as real-world
tests like transcoding a 4K video
to 1080p and timing how long
it takes. Our lab also measures
the brightness and colour
accuracy of each phone's display.
Our proprietary battery test
determines longevity on a charge
by endlessly streaming web pages
over an LTE network; we then
recharge the tested phones to
see how quickly they charge in
15-minute intervals.
To measure camera
performance, we shoot images
under a variety of conditions,
comparing the results to photos
produced by cameras in the same
price range.
For 5G phones, we also
consider the price of the device
compared to comparable 4G
handsets on the market.
01. Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus
Screen Size: 6.6 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
Size / weight: 157.5 x 76.2 x 7.6mm / 195g | Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 9:46
5G networks supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone, O2, EE, Three
Samsung's Galaxy S22 Plus is the best 5G phone you can buy right
now because it works on every type of 5G network. The Snapdragon
8 Gen 1 processor that makes 5G connectivity possible also delivers
performance that can match any Android phone.
The biggest mark against the Galaxy S22 Plus is its price. At
£949/$1,049, this is not a device for those on a budget. But you get
a lot of phone for that hefty price. The Dynamic AMOLED screen
lets you opt for a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother scrolling and more
immersive gaming – just be aware that the faster refresh rate can
drain the phone's battery at a faster clip. Samsung has also made
improvements to the rear cameras, with the 50MP dual pixel lens
standing out with its super-crisp zoom shots.
You'll be able to find cheaper 5G phones, especially the more
recent releases, but only the Galaxy S22 Plus offers a great balance
between features and price.
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Introducing 5G
The best 5G phones
02. iPhone 13
Screen size : 6.1 inches Processor: A15 Bionic
Size/weight: 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.7 mm / 174g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 8:25 | 5G networks
supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, O2, Vodafone
While keeping the
notch and multi-camera
system of the iPhone 11,
the 13 takes design cues
from the more angular
iPhone 4
As it does with many things, Apple took its
time to get into 5G phones but it struck a fine
note right away with the iPhone 12. While the
iPhone 13 Pro doesn’t do enough to distinguish
itself from the standard iPhone 13, the Pro
Max certainly does with its huge display and
sheer desirability. It’s a super performer too
while the cameras are among the best we’ve
seen, especially in low light. It’s eye-wateringly
expensive, though.
The standard iPhone 13 is in many ways the pick
of the new iPhone range with plenty of reasons
not to go for the same-sized iPhone 13 Pro –
though we love the Pro. The whole iPhone 13
range comes with the latest A15 Bionic platform
so there’s no performance limitation either (Pro
has more RAM though). Available in Midnight,
Starlight, Red, Green, Blue and Pink, there’s also
the iPhone 13 mini to consider, too.
The new (to iPhones) MagSafe connector
on the rear of the iPhone 13 is a really interesting
proposition – this magnetic connection tech not
only enables you to attach things to your phone,
such as a charger or a case, but can also tell
what’s been connected through a special chip.
“The standard iPhone 13 is in many ways the pick of the new
iPhone range with plenty of reasons not to go for the samesized iPhone 13 Pro – though we love the Pro”
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Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
03. Samsung Galaxy S22
Screen Size: 6.1 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 | Size / weight: 144.7 x 71.1 x 7.6mm / 167.2g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 7:52 | 5G networks supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, O2, EE, Vodafone, Three
Up until now, the best 5G phones have been pretty
bulky to accommodate the larger batteries and 5G
modems required for the faster networks. But the
Samsung Galaxy S22 is relatively compact. You're
not going to mistake this device for an iPhone
SE, but the Galaxy S22 is just over 6 inches tall
and weighs just 167 grams. You still get a 6.1-inch
AMOLED screen capable of a 120Hz refresh rate for
smoother scrolling.
At £769/$799, this had been the most affordable
5G phone you could get from Samsung. The
phone maker has since released the Galaxy A53 5G,
which costs £399/$449. A 5G version of the Galaxy
A52 is also available. While the Galaxy S22 may be
less expensive than the Plus and Ultra versions,
you're not getting short-changed with this model,
as the phone features camera improvements to its
three rear lenses, including a telephoto lens with a
3x lossless zoom.
Meanwhile the fact that the phone comes
running Android 12 out of the box with Samsung’s
superb One UI 4 skin on top means interacting
with it is a sheer joy. Throw in some genuine
gaming chops thanks to its impressive GPU and
plenty of internal storage space, and it is easy to see
how this phone delivers the complete package.
Unlike many bulkier 5G flagships, the
Samsung Galaxy S22 is relatively compact
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Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
04. OnePlus 9
Screen Size: 6.55 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 888 | Size / weight: 7160 x 74.2 x 8.7mm / 192g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 10:51| 5G networks supported: T-Mobile, Verizon, Three, EE, Vodafone
The era of affordable 5G phones is coming, with
future devices promising price tags of around
£500/$500. For now, though, the OnePlus 9 is an
affordable ways to get a premium 5G device. The
OnePlus 9 runs on a Snapdragon 888 processor,
just like the other top Android phones with 5G
connectivity. You get a 6.55-inch fluid AMOLED
screen with a fast 120Hz refresh rate, and you can
charge the phone quickly with OnePlus' Warp
Charge 65T technology. It takes just over half an
hour to fully charge the device. You can also get a
day’s worth of power from only a 15 minute charge
and the OnePlus 9 is compatible with most wireless
Qi chargers.
OnePlus’ cameras was always where their
devices fell short. But OnePlus has partnered with
Hasselblad to produce camera technology for
120
“The OnePlus 9 is an
affordable way to get a
premium 5G device”
smartphones. There's no Hassleblad lens in the
OnePlus 9, that is probably going to come in the
next generation of phones, but they did provide
colour calibration for three rear cameras. The 50MP
ultra-wide, 48MP main camera and monochrome
lens offer a lot of shooting options and produce
great results. If what you're looking for is a powerful
phone with great specs and can connect to 5G
without breaking the bank, though, the OnePlus 9
is a great option.
Buyer’s Guide
The best 5G phones in 2020
The S20 Ultra’s battery
will last all day on a
single charge
05. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
Screen Size: 6.9 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 865 | Size / weight: 166.9 x 76.0 x 8.8mm / 220g | Battery life
(Hrs:Mins): 11:58 | 5G networks supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone, EE, Three, O2
When money's no object, turn to the Galaxy S20
Ultra for your 5G phone needs. It may have a price
tag as expansive as its 6.9-inch OLED display, but
the S20 Ultra also boasts plenty of features for its
£1,199/$1,399 asking price.
That display has a 120Hz refresh rate for a much
smoother, immersive experience when you're
scrolling or gaming. The quad-lens rear cameras
take excellent pictures, and the powerful Space
Zoom works really well up to 10x. A huge 5,000
mAh battery means you'll get through the day on
a single-charge.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra works with every kind of
5G network so you needn't have to worry about
which model to get for which carrier. The phone's
price means it won't be for everyone, but people
who do splurge on the Galaxy S20 Ultra will be
satisfied with the result.
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Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
06. Realme 9 Pro Plus
Screen Size: 6.4 inches | Processor: MediaTek Dimensity 920 | Size / weight: 160.2 x 73.3 x 8mm / 182g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 10:58 | 5G networks supported: Verizon, EE, O2
This is the first ‘Pro Plus’ handset in the range,
and it boasts a few features that we don’t see in the
average smartphone. This is a seriously impressive
device that shows us that ‘Pro Plus’ isn’t just an
oxymoron, it’s a promise. If you know Realme
phones, you’ll know that the brand excels in the
budget to mid-range market. The Realme 9 Pro
Plus is just more evidence of that.
There are two unique features that, it seems,
are meant to be the Realme 9 Pro Plus’ selling
points. The first is a heart rate monitor built into
the device’s fingerprint scanner. The second selling
122
point truly is something bold and bizarre: the rear
of the phone changes colour in sunlight, going
from a sparkly blue to bright red. We love how
weird this is - even if it brings no tangible benefits.
But while you might check out the phone for this
eye-catching novelty, you’ll stay for its solid range
of features and specs.
The phone’s cameras, charging speed and
processing power are all above-average for
a phone in this price range. Even the weaker
elements, like the display or battery, are still on par
with rival phones at this price.
Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
07. Sony Xperia 1 III
Screen Size: 6.8 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 888 | Size / weight: 165 x 71 x 8.2mm / 186g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 12:46 | 5G networks supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon
The Sony Xperia 1 III is the best smartphone
the company has made for years, offering a top-tier
display, great battery life and a versatile camera
that’s easy to use. Inside the phone are a Qualcomm
Snapdragon 888 chipset and 12GB of RAM, which
we found delivered impressive performance, and
you’ve got the option of 256GB or 512GB of storage.
That’s plenty of power, and more than enough
storage space for the average user.
Sony is making a song and dance about how
this is the world’s first 4K 120Hz smartphone –
although that claim isn’t quite as impressive as it
sounds, as Sony is currently the only brand making
4K phones. That 120Hz upgrade makes this screen
better than ever though, with super-smooth
scrolling the icing on the ultra-high resolution cake.
There’s no denying that the price of the Xperia 1 III is
high, and the 21:9 aspect ratio design will put some
off, too. But if you want a highly capable smartphone
with a superb screen, this may be the phone for you.
© TechRadar
“That’s plenty of power, and more than enough
storage space for the average user”
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Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
08. OnePlus 9 Pro
Screen Size: 6.7 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 888 | Size / weight: 163.2 x 73.6 x 8.7mm / 197g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 10:40 | 5G networks supported: Verizon, T-Mobile, Three, O2, EE, Vodaphone
The OnePlus 9 Pro is a culmination of the
company’s efforts over the past couple of years,
and it’s the first time a smartphone from the
company has felt like the complete package.
It offers top-end power, a great camera
experience and all the bells and whistles you’d
“The OnePlus 9 Pro has a
premium design, with a
6.7-inch QHD display that
delivers strong brightness
levels and top-notch detail”
124
expect from a flagship smartphone right now.
This is a handset that can genuinely compete with
the very best phones from the biggest brands.
However, it also comes with a high-end price tag,
and there’s no denying that the OnePlus 9 Pro is an
expensive choice for your next phone.
The OnePlus 9 Pro has a premium design,
with a 6.7-inch QHD display that delivers strong
brightness levels and top-notch detail, while a
smooth 120Hz refresh rate adds to the top-tier feel.
The handset itself may be too big for some,
but the design feels worth the money, with a glass
rear and the choice of three colors to ensure that
your new OnePlus matches your style – we think
the Morning Mist shade pictured throughout this
review is particularly good-looking.
Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
09. OnePlus Nord 2
© OnePlus
Screen Size: 6.43 inches | Processor: Media Tek Dimensity 1200-AI | Size / weight: 159.1 x 73.3 x 8.2mm / 189g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 11:18 | 5G networks supported: Three, EE, 02, Vodaphone, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T
“This is an amazing package that OnePlus has put together
for the price”
OnePlus first made its name offering very good
phone specs at very good prices, and it’s back in that
groove with the OnePlus Nord 2. While its phones
have slowly become more expensive over the years,
the Nord is a fantastic mid-ranger.
Starting at just £399 in the UK (the US has its
own version, the Nord N200 5G, which retails for
$239), you get a powerful Media Tek Dimensity
1200-AI processor, at least 6GB of RAM, at least
128GB of storage, and 5G thrown in. That’s not to
mention the sharp, bright 6.43-inch display, which
zips along thanks to its 90Hz refresh rate.
Compromises have been made to get the
OnePlus Nord 2 to this price, however: there’s
no wireless charging or waterproofing, and the
camera and battery life are good rather than great.
All in all though, this is an amazing package that
OnePlus has put together for the price.
125
Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
Note 20’s
stylus offers
precise writing
and drawing
on the screen
10. Samsung Galaxy Note 20
Screen Size: 6.7 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 865 Plus | Size / weight: 161.6 x 75.2 x 8.3mm / 194g
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 9:38 | 5G networks supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, EE, Vodafone, Three
The Galaxy Note 20 offers a nice compromise
for people who want a full-featured 5G phone
without the four-figure price tag. At £949/$999,
the Note 20 isn’t inexpensive by any means, but
you do get a lot for your money, including a
device that works with all flavours of 5G.
The Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset inside
the Galaxy Note 20 delivers some of the best
performance you’ll see from an Android phone,
126
and the cameras stack up well against other top
flagships. Like the Note 20 Ultra, the Note 20
includes an S Pen, and while the stylus is more
responsive on Samsung’s pricier phablet, you still
get all the note-taking features on this model.
If there’s one thing to be wary of with the
Note 20, it’s the battery life, which is perhaps
below average. Still, that’s one of the few marks
against an otherwise outstanding phone.
Buyer’s guide
The best 5G phones
Verdict
Ultimately, the Galaxy S22 Plus
may well be the 5G phone to get
if you want a handset that works
with every kind of 5G network.
In addition to its 5G connectivity,
Samsung’s plus-sized flagship
phone also sports a big Dynamic
AMOLED panel, vastly improved
cameras and above-average
battery life. It just edges the more
expensive Galaxy Note 20 Ultra,
though gamers should consider
that phablet for its compatibility
with Microsoft’s streaming game
service. The standard Samsung
Galaxy S22 offers a lot of the same
features, only without the hefty
price. If you want something
even more affordable and don’t
mind missing out on some of
the premium features then the
Galaxy S21 FE would be worth
looking into.
If you’re UK-based and looking
for a bargain phone that acts
premium, you could do a lot
worse than the OnePlus Nord.
While Samsung and OnePlus
are dominating the selection of
5G phones thus far, don’t overlook
Realme’s 9 Pro Plus.
If you’re not a fan of Android
devices then you’ll need to decide
between the choice of iPhones
currently available. The iPhone
13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13
Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are
all 5G capable, your decision will
ultimately come down to how
much you’re willing to spend on
a device.
11. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra
Screen Size: 6.9 inches | Processor: Snapdragon 865 Plus
Size / weight: 164.8 x 77.2 x 8.1mm / 208g | Battery life (Hrs:Mins): 10:15
5G networks supported: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, EE, Vodafone, Three
“It’s the gaming aspect of the Note 20
Ultra that makes it one of the best”
The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is Samsung’s most versatile big-screen
phone, and that includes its approach to 5G. This 6.9-inch phablet
works with every available 5G network, and its dynamic 120Hz
display adjust the refresh rate to squeeze more battery life while also
delivering smoother scrolling and more immersive gaming.
It’s the gaming aspect of the Note 20 Ultra that makes it one
of the best 5G phones, and not just because it runs on a powerful
Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset. The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra works with
Microsoft’s xCloud game streaming to let you play more than
100 Xbox games on your phone. With 5G connectivity, gameplay
should be a delight.
You’ll pay a bit more for the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra than you
would for some of Samsung’s other 5G phones, like the Galaxy S20
Plus. But you’ll find it’s well worth the premium price.
127
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