$OUHDG\DOOÀDJVKLS6DPVXQJSKRQHVDUHDQGZH¶OOOLNHO\VHHL3KRQHV
appear this October. 5G phones are getting cheaper, too, with T-Mobile’s new
5HYYO*FRPLQJLQDWXQGHU
Carriers are making a lot of promises around the new technology, some of
which we may see realized over the upcoming year. We’ve been waiting for 5G
KRPHLQWHUQHWWRVWDUWEULGJLQJWKHGLJLWDOGLYLGHVLQFHWKDWZDV¿UVWSURPLVHGLQ
late 2018. Verizon has that service in very limited parts of a few cities, but it
swears we’ll see more action by the end of this year. 5G home internet is also
part of what T-Mobile promised the government when it absorbed Sprint,
though we haven’t seen it yet.
Beyond that, though, are potential new applications with possibilities as radical
as how the mobile web changed our lives with 3G, and social media changed our
OLYHVZLWK:D\EDFNDWDKDFNDWKRQLQ,VDZKRZFRXOGKHOS
SDUHQWVFRQQHFWZLWKLQIDQWVLQ1,&8V7KH&(2RI2QH3OXVPXVHGWKDW*PD\
make local storage obsolete; the president of Qualcomm said it may mean you’ll
never again have to upgrade a game console. Using 5G (and 6G) as a sort of
quality-controlled, industrial “super Wi-Fi,” I’ve seen demos on future
holographic communication and super-precise robotic surgery at South Korea’s
T.um. Qualcomm’s XR2 headset and Spatial software put you in realistic,
augmented reality social or business meetings, and with 5G, you don’t need to
be right near a router to do it.
9HUL]RQR̆HUVWKHRQO\IRUPRIWKDWGHOLYHUVDJHQXLQHO\GL̆HUHQWH[SHULHQFH
IURP²EXWWKHUH¶VKDUGO\DQ\RILWDYDLODEOH9HUL]RQ¶VPLOOLPHWHUZDYH*
showed speeds up to 2Gbps and latencies well under 10ms. That can enable
radical new augmented and virtual reality apps in the future. But we didn’t
record Verizon 5G at more than 11 percent of locations in any city, and
availability was more often down at 2 to 3 percent.
Millimeter-wave uses very weak, short-range panels that are easily blocked by
obstacles. In our tests, millimeter-wave doesn’t generally penetrate buildings
and even has trouble with glass; we had our drivers keep their windows down,
with the phones facing out, so the network even had a chance.
No carrier’s 5G is living up to latency promises yet. Lag won’t work for
multiplayer games or VR, or for new applications such as telepresence and