News - Europe and South Korea working together on 5G standards

[HEXUS]

To help reach a winning global consensus on standards.

Read more.

[crossy]

They get my full support for this kind of initiative - now if they can persuade the US to accept it too then everyone will be happy. No need for separate "Asian", "International" and "US" models.

I suspect though, that the major US carriers will veto anything that looks like a standard from elsewhere.

I know Korea's mentioned - any idea if the Japanese are also looking to "buy in" to this prospective 5G standard? (All this, and we only got the first 4G phone in the house last week!).

[imshimaru]

Sounds awesome ...still waiting for 3G around me :/

[shaithis]

Japan have been trialling 5g for a while IIRC.....so I guess they have their own standard....

[watercooled]

Japan have been trialling 5g for a while IIRC.....so I guess they have their own standard....

Quite a few countries have been experimenting with 5G; testing != standardised. 5G is still very much in the experimental/research stage, although a few places seem to confuse LTE-A for 5G. There are no formal standards for 5G yet, and the 'trials' are still pretty much limited to establishing a functional link between some eye watering expensive kit in indoor lab environments.

There's still some way to go between this, figuring out what sort of radio technology to use, how to implement it effectively in cheap, mass-producable hardware, moving to real-world testing, changing stuff around a bit more, and so on before they can realistically standardise anything.

[TooNice]

shaithis: It is a very recent development and only at "indoor experimental trial" level. I don't think that they plan to create a standard just for their own use and it looks like are looking to roll out at around 2020 too. South Korea has a much higher market penetration of 4G as far as I know, so they are probably the ones in the best position to move things forward.

[deejayburnout]

Sounds awesome ...still waiting for 3G around me :/

i was just about to say the same

[crossy]

(Sounds awesome ...still waiting for 3G around me :/) i was just about to say the same

Just did a quick look at the EE coverage checker and 'lassie should be well within 3G coverage - heck if Cardenden gets it! You're not on O2 or Three by any chance? Coverage for those two seems to be pretty spotty - one reason why I defected from Three.

Never mind, if 4G is supposed to give better coverage then surely 5G will improve on that - so you'll be able to watch streaming video on the top of Ben Lawers! And for my next joke ...

[deejayburnout]

Very true however I am with Vodafone. If it wasn't for my suresignal I would have to stand on my roof to get 1 bar of GPRS. I kid you not.

As you would expect, I am moving to EE when my contract is up

Just realised another Fifer

That's You, me and Rob

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its bad enough 4G is hardly widespread and people like EE charge silly amounts for the data allowances.

Whether,its 5G or 10G,the data allowances are the major limitations ATM and their cost.

[LSG501]

5g... I'd just love 3g personally... I get to choose between making a call or getting data on where I live....

vodafone - just manages 2g data but gives rock solid phone calls where I live
ee/orange - I can get 3g data and phone calls if I'm outside or huddled in a corner of the room nearest the front of the house.. I kid you not
o2 - yeah right
three - um.... they do mobile signals.... not a chance of getting them here.

I've gone with vodafone purely because I'm more likely to use the phone than use mobile data these days, I've got wifi at home and most of the locations I go are near free wifi

Now before you think I'm in the middle of nowhere... I'm not I'm in Norfolk

[rox0r]

I'd be happier if 3G had decent building penetration rather than silly-fast outdoor speeds.

[crossy]

Its bad enough 4G is hardly widespread and people like EE charge silly amounts for the data allowances. Whether,its 5G or 10G,the data allowances are the major limitations ATM and their cost.

Just got an HTC M8 Mini (/Mini 2) for a relative - 2GB data plus unlimited everything for £23.99/month. Reasonably happy with that considering we're in a 3G-only area. But as you say, the only folks who seem to "get" the idea that if we've got a fancy, faster 4G network that we might actually want to use more data than 3G is Three. Voda especially is a joke - I'm sure I saw a 4G plan the other day with 250MB of data - what the flip!

Maybe when the MVNO's get out there we'll see some pressure on prices?

[watercooled]

Yeah, TBH 4G does seem to be getting used largely as a marketing point - I already get 5-15Mb/s on 3G with reasonable latency, which TBH is more than enough for web browsing/small downloads, messaging, etc. The sort of thing 4G would be useful for is streaming higher bitrate video, but the data caps pretty much prevent you from doing that!

On the flip side, 4G allows more overall bandwidth on the RAN so in theory more people can get reasonable speeds in very busy areas, and it should allow better coverage vs 3G. But yeah as I said, on a lot of networks, all you really seem to get is a marketing term and some pretty numbers when you run a speed test...

[Crevan]

We would need to make a globally agreed definition and standards of 5G networks in the future, but for now we define it as a high speed mobile network that’s nearly 1,000 times faster than 4G

So, to be clear - by their definition 5G should deliver up to 300 Gbps wirelessly? I'm no telecomms expert, but that seems a little too optimistic for the time frame they're targeting.