There’s no doubt about it, 5G is going to make an amazing difference to your data speeds. The throughput is astonishing and we’ve seen examples of entire movies being downloaded in seconds.
There is, though, two very important changes that 5G will cause.
The first, rather obviously, is thanks to the speed at which things will happen. You’ll be able to complete tasks quicker, which means you’ll have more time to move onto other tasks. More downloading, streaming and browsing can be performed in the very same length of time.
Speed!
Here’s a video just to show the speed of 5G and how it compares to 4G..
It’s an EE speed test and they managed to get 40 Mbps on 4G. That’s about right. I’ve just done a test in a field here in Cornwall and I’ve got 49Mbps on Vodafone 4G.
The 5G speed, which hit 440Mbps, was crazy quick. However, I should point out that the EE 5G network is pretty much empty. It does, though, have a huge amount of capacity so you can probably expect speeds to stay near that.
Consumption!
This is where I need to stay on this first point. If you get yourself a 5G phone and start hammering speed tests, you’re going to blow through your data allowance in no time at all. 10GB per month is nothing because you’ll get through it so quickly.
New internet options
The second thing I need to mention is the fact that 5G is going to be far quicker than a lot of home broadband connections too. At home I’ve got a Virgin Business Voom Fibre connection which is “up to” 350Mbps. I get, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, more than that. Here’s a speed test I’ve just done…
I should be getting 350Mbps, but I’m getting 410Mbps. Virgin Business also offer 500Mbps speeds but let’s not get into that right now. Let’s just say that 5G is going to be around as fast as a very, very quick Virgin Business cable connection. That’s faster than most of Virgin Media home broadband connections. Faster than the connection you might get in your office at work.
But.. at home, on my Virgin Cable connection, I’m not worried about how much data I’m using. I can stream on Netflix, listen to tunes on Spotify, grab my geeky ISO images, download big attachments. All quickly. All without buffering. It’s quick, it’s easy.
With 5G, some networks will no doubt throw in “data free” services which let you stream video and play music without it impacting your data allowance. However, for other things you might be doing on your phone, that data package is going to burn up quickly, and you’ll no doubt have one eye on your allowance all the time.
That all said, as things move forward, as competition builds, as packages become more affordable with more data and the technology becomes more widespread; we’re going to see 5G become a viable alternative to traditional fixed-line solutions. It’ll be faster than most current ADSL and FTTC-delivered internet connections and you can no doubt see why BT were so keen to take on EE.