With mobile operators’ marketing departments already throwing around claims about their 5G services, the United Nations is weighing in with its definition of what qualifies a network as next-generation.
With mobile operators’ marketing departments already throwing around claims about their 5G services, the United Nations’ telecom standards body is weighing in with its definition of what qualifies a network as next-generation.
Verizon Wireless will begin delivering “5G” service to select users in 11 U. S. cities in mid-2017, even though some places don’t yet have access to 4G. And at the Mobile World Congress 2017 trade show in Barcelona, companies including Intel, Qualcomm and Ericsson will be promoting their moves towards 5G.
But what marks the difference between one generation of mobile technology and the next?
There are 13 technical requirements for next-generation networks on the draft list published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U. N. agency that sets rules for radio spectrum usage and telecommunications interoperability.
Among the requirements are peak download speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) and peak upload speeds of up to 10 Gbps.
We all know that those “up to” speeds are rarely seen outside the marketing department, so the ITU has helpfully set out what we should expect to see in the real world. Users should experience typical download speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps), and typical upload speeds of 50 Mbps, it said.
When things get really busy, it also wants networks to be able to deliver a minimum level of service even when there are 1 million connected devices per square kilometer (2.
