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What is 5G, why is US President Donald Trump obsessed with it – and did it cause the coronavirus?

STORYBen Sin
Will 5G be better, faster and more innovative than 4G? Photo: Xinhua

Even if you’re not a techie, chances are you’ve seen or heard a lot about 5G lately. It’s currently plastered on most billboards and banners inside telecom and phone stores; it’s been a hot topic in world politics and there’s even a wild conspiracy theory that claims 5G causes the coronavirus. (No, it does not).

But what is 5G exactly? It’s the fifth generation technology of mobile cellular networks that offers vastly improved speed and bandwidth over the 4G, aka LTE, networks on which your phone is almost certainly running right now.

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A cellphone tower, used for a 5G network, is seen on a street in Beijing, China. Photo: AFP

5G is particularly important – it is one of the key tensions in the US/China trade war is due to US President Donald Trump’s desire for America to “beat” China to 5G deployment – because 5G is a far bigger technological jump over 4G than any previous generation jump. 5G, when it’s fully developed, is said to be close to 100 times faster than 4G right now.

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Speed is obviously important – with 5G, you’d be able to load any website, PDF document or Netflix movie instantaneously – but it’s the advanced bandwidth capabilities that will be world changing.

Maya Jama wore a 5G-powered dress at Bafta 2020. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

To use a real world metaphor: data speed is similar to how fast a car can go on a freeway; data bandwidth is how many lanes are on said freeway. As anyone who’s stuck in traffic knows, if the road is wider with more lanes, traffic flows smoother and faster.

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1G gave us the ability to make calls on the go; 2G allowed us to send and load text; 3G let us send photos and 4G made streaming video and music a thing. But the sheer speed and bandwidth of 5G networks will be the structure on which entire smart cities and ecosystems are built.

Right now, what’s limiting self-driving cars such as those you saw in Tom Cruise’s 2002 film Minority Report, virtual reality applications and other IoT (internet of things) infrastructure is not that the hardware isn’t ready, it’s that the networks aren’t ready to handle all that data. 5G will change this with URLLC (Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Connection), offering instant communication between networks and devices.

At a macro societal level – there will be enough data zipping around at lightspeed to power entire smart cities: hospitals can send patient data to hospitals while on route; stop lights can be smart enough to account for flow of traffic from data sent from the other side of town; self-driving cars will be much safer with a more capable artificial intelligence. 5G, when fully realised, will bring trillions to the global economy.

The sci-fi thriller Blade Runner 2049. Photo: Sony Pictures

But benefits will be had on a smaller personal level, too: virtual reality content will become more immersive with higher resolution visuals; e-commerce companies can build augmented reality applications that allow users to see the item in the real world before purchase, much like the scenes in the cyberpunk sequel, Blade Runner 2049. All in all, there will be better communication all around.

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“But 5G has already launched, so where are all the benefits now?” you may ask. Yes, 5G networks have gone live in parts of South Korea, mainland China, the US and UK, and in the past month, Hong Kong. But the current 5G tech that is flowing through our airwaves is in its preliminary stage, with very limited broadcast range. Essentially, you’d have to walk a few blocks just to find a street corner with proper 5G reception.

A Huawei 5G mobile phone testing speed in Huawei 5G Innovation and Experience Centre in London, Britain. Photo: Xinhua

That means all the talks of 5G smartphones right now are mostly marketing hype. The reality is 5G will not really benefit the average user until at least another year or two. The fact that Apple did not put 5G bands in the iPhone 11 last autumn (despite Android competitors such as Samsung and Huawei rushing to implement 5G) says it all. As much as marketers want us to think we live in the age of 5G now, it’s still a 4G world for most of us today.

But the age of 5G is coming.

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Huawei

5G is one of the key tensions in the US/China trade war; it is said to be 100 times faster than 4G, and one conspiracy theory about it is that it causes Covid-19