If you thought the roughly 15Mbps you’re likely averaging on 4G was speedy just wait until you get your hands on 5G, which in a recent large-scale field trial recorded a peak download speed of 3.6Gbps.
That’s ridiculously fast and while that was the peak speed even the average of 1.34Gbps leaves 4G well and truly in the dust.
The trial was carried out in Chengdu, China by Huawei and NTT Docomo and was designed as the first to meet real-world conditions, with 24 users connecting at once on a sub-6GHz frequency band.
Being based on real world conditions it’s feasible that the outcome could give a reflection of the experience the typical user will actually get on 5G.
That’s encouraging, as the trial, which used Multi-User MIMO (MU MIMO) technology, reached speeds ten times faster than Single User MIMO (SU MIMO) technology and far, far faster than standard 4G.
The trial was also the first time that the performance of Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA) and Filtered OFDM (F-OFDM), which are new radio access technologies, was validated in the field.
More trials are set to take place, with Huawei and NTT Docomo collaborating to further verify these new radio access technologies and looking ahead Huawei plans to launch the first 5G pilot networks with its partners in 2018, with interoperability testing set to be completed in 2019 and a commercial launch planned for 2020.
Looking closer to home we might also get 4G networks in the UK, and especially London, by 2020 and while the speeds are unlikely to reach the theoretical 5G peaks of around 20Gbps, the 1.34Gbps or even 3.6Gbps speeds recorded here could be feasible.
Company director for our 4 websites as follows:
Simon has a first class honours degree in business management and has worked for our companies since 2008. He is responsible for the upkeep of the website, including the price comparison tools and for some editorial content across the site.
He has joint responsibility for 3G.co.uk and SIMOnly.co.uk and is lead Director for 4G.co.uk.
Ofcom has laid out its plans for the auctioning of 26GHz and 40GHz mmWave 5G spectrum.
