I've been spending the past few months dreaming of higher mobile speeds, with Qualcomm teaming with Australian telco, Telstra, alongside Ericsson, and Netgear on Gigabit LTE - but Qualcomm also teased 5G not so long ago.
Now, the International Telecommunications Unit (ITU) have decided on the 5G specifications: with the ITU statnig that a single 5G cell must feature 20Gbps of bandwidth, and include support for up to 1 million devices connected per kilometer (0.62 miles). The standard will also require carriers to have at least 100MHz of free spectrum, and where available: up to 1GHz.
The ITU published the first draft of its 5G radio interfaces a few days ago, but we should expect the final tech specs on 5G technology by November. But the tease of at least 20Gbps down and 10Gbps up is absolutely incredible, but you won't be getting 20Gbps to your smartphone - in reality, the 20Gbps will split its bandwidth across all of the devices it is blasting to.
The per-user download/upload speeds will hit 100Mbps and 50Mbps, respectively - something you can get right now on your 4G LTE device. Personally, I've hit 220Mbps+ on Telstra, on my Google Pixel smartphone - but 5G will offer 100Mbps, all the time - not just in the best conditions. The reduced latency to 1ms, is incredible - but we should expect bigger and better things from 5G once it's completely finalized.