EU, South Korea Collaborate On Superfast 5G Standards 78
jfruh writes The European Commission and the South Korean government announced that they will be harmonizing their radio spectrum policy in an attempt to help bring 5G wireless tech to market by 2020. While the technology is still in an embryonic state, but one South Korean researcher predicts it could be over a thousand times faster than current 4G networks.
How much more can we squeeze? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's only so much theoretical bandwidth on the broadcast range e/m spectrum. How much gets reserved for non-consumer purposes? How many towers/area can we afford? There's gotta be a theoretical fundamental limit, somewhere, right? Like there is with Moore's law?
It won't matter anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
I have 4G now, and it is still as slow as 3G, which is as slow as 2G, which is as slow as 1Xrtt when everyone is using their phones and the pipe to the tower is full. I often see 10 - 30 Kbps during peak times.
During the middle of the night, 1 bar will get me 1.3 - 1.9Mbps on 3G, and 3 - 5 Mbps on 4G, but during the day, I struggle to get 100Kbps on 3G or 4G, even with 5 bars.
I can watch my download speed increase as everyone goes to bed. It's funny (sad) to graph my download speed and see it jump up on the hour, and jump a little less on the half hour as the pipe opens up.
Cheers