Verizon and AT&T mobile phone carriers are racing to build 5G networks in Cleveland. The 5g networks are built on much smaller cells than current cellular systems. They are looking to launch their service by the end of 2019/early 2020. Verizon thinks end of 2019 and AT&T are saying early 2020. 5g technology is promised to have data speeds 50 to 100 times faster than 4g LTE networks. Right now those are the only carrier and each one is investing millions of dollars building systems in Cleveland.
Apple plans to launch three different iPhone models in 2020 with 6.7-inch, 6.1-inch and 5.4-inch screen sizes. All three models will have OLED screens, which are more colorful than LCD panels. The 6.1-inch model will not support 5g, but the others will support 5g. The two 2020 iPhones will use Qualcomm’s 5G modem, since they ended the lawsuit in April. Sadly, the iPhones coming out in September 2019 will not support 5g.
Ericsson (ERIC) a Swedish telecom-equipment maker says that “rapid early momentum” and consumer enthusiasm means the switch to 5G is happening much faster than anticipated. In the report 45% of the world’s population will be able to access the next generation wireless networks in 2024. They also revised its estimate for global 5G subscriptions, which refers to active devices on 5G networks. They’re now estimating about 1.9 billion subscriptions by the end of 2024, which is up 27% from its forecast in November.
A 5G coverage map from Ookla, maker of Speedtest.net app, provides a detailed look at which 5G networks are live in a given place from a given network, and whether that coverage is commercially available or limited. Want to know how to find out? Follow these steps to track 5G with Ookla’s map:
1: Navigate to www.speedtest.net/ookla-5g-map from any browser.
2: Drag the map to find the country you’re interested in.
3: Click the bubble to see how many areas have 5G coverage, and from which network.
4: Use the + control to zoom into the map and click the bubble again for more detailed information, e.g. if there are multiple cities across a country with various active 5G networks. You may find you need to zoom in quite a bit to find specific locations in specific cities.
Last week one person was able to get onto T-Mobile’s 5g network and he reached 500Mbps speeds. This week PCMag was able to sneak onto it with an unlocked Verizon Galaxy S10 5G. They ran many tests in New York City. The tests were run between 42nd and 46th Streets on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan ranging from 111 to 336 feet from a cell site. T-Mobile speeds ranged from 350-490Mbps and one test registered a speed of 493Mbps just like the other speed tests that were run last week. 4g LTE was ranging between 62Mbps and 113Mbps. The LTE network had many more people on it than the 5G network that was most likely empty.
Recently OpenSignal ranked 87 countries based on average download and upload speeds, 4G availability, video experience, and latency. US came in 5th place for 4G availability, 58th for video experience, 50th for latency experience, and 39th for upload speeds.
The US had an average mobile network download speed of 21.3 Mbps. That was just above the 17.6 Mbps average for all 87 countries involved in the study and put the US in 30th place overall. The report was based on data from 43 million devices collected from January to March 2019.
First responders are excited for 5g too! 5g will allow firefighters to see through smoke, police to instantly track gunshots, and give security professionals a better look at where you’re going. Qwake Technologies, has a way where firefighters are seeing in the dark while they fight fires. Firefighters on the scene wear the thermal cameras and the data gets transmitted back to command. This could help firefighters coordinate when there are multiple fires in different rooms and a team has to split up. With 4g this wasn’t possible, but with 5g it is.
The new era promised by the advent of 5G technology provides some exciting opportunities. These include much faster data speeds that will enable far quicker downloads. Besides making it possible to download your favorite movies and videos in a flash, these higher speeds could enable the Internet of things and make for improvements in autonomous vehicles and many other technologies that could benefit the world.
But a few red flags have been raised about 5G. Experts have been arguing for years about whether it could present radiation dangers, for example. But did you know 5G and weather forecasting could be an issue? Read on to learn how 5G affects weather forecasts.
Meteorologists are warning us that 5G can interfere with weather forecasts and make them much less accurate. The mobile network could cause interference that prevents satellites from detecting concentrations of water vapor in the atmosphere accurately, according to a report in the journal Nature.
Many organizations had requested to delay 5G, but the FCC has gone ahead and allowed it to begin. An auction on April 17 involved two groups of frequencies: one between 24.25 and 24.45 gigahertz and the other between 24.75 and 25.25 gigahertz, Nature reported.
Information about atmospheric water vapor is plugged into computer models to predict the weather. The vapor transmits a faint signal at a 23.8-gigahertz frequency.
According to meteorologists, a 5G station transmitting close to that same frequency could be mistaken for water vapor. That may cause the weather forecast to be less accurate.
This month Verizon launched 5G in Chicago and Minneapolis and then they announced 20 more cities they plan to have 5g in 2019.
Verizon planned on charging an extra $10 per month for 5g with the fee waived for the first three months. However, Verizon now announced this fee will not be charged for users of the new $1300 Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. This delay doesn’t have an end date, unfortunately customers using the Moto Z3 with the additional 5G Moto Mod will still have to pay to use 5G after their first initial three months of the service.
We keep hearing about 5G mobile networks arriving in very limited areas and it having misleading claims by carriers. What about T-Mobile? T-Mobile is being honest, T-Mobile’s CTO, Neville Ray wrote in a blog post that millimeter-wave spectrum used for 5G “will never materially scale beyond small pockets of 5G hotspots in dense urban environments.” Which means that will rule out the possibility of 5G’s fastest speeds reaching rural areas. Ray also goes over the 5G launches we’ve seen from Verizon and AT&T are spotty and that performance is highly variable. These problems are going to be difficult for carriers to solve.
