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Industry Preparing for 5G
The technology sector is expected to announce 5G products and services before the real thing is even ready.
20:27 14 January 2018
In 2010, T-Mobile started using 4G even when the real service (LTE) was deployed a year later.
However, this did not stop the industry from making hype and many manufacturers and carriers followed suit. Experts say that the same thing is expected to happen with 5G.
5G has been a hot topic in the engineering community for the past couple of years. Many conferences held last year put this technology on top of their programme. It is also the hot topic at NI Week for several years.
However, carriers and service providers are racing against each other to make sure that they are the first one to offer the service. But don’t be fooled; 5G is not yet here. Many marketers and service providers are pushing “non-standalone” 5G, meaning that the initial 5G will ride on top of LTE. This means that the available service is more like LTE Advanced Pro but hyped as 5G.
But 5G will be deployed soon and this will happen in numerous stages. 5G components that will take us closer to realising this technology are already here. These include beamforming, phased-array antennas, software-defined networks and mmWave.