5G is on the way!

[David Horn]

(09-10-2018, 05:19 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: If this can be done economically for mobile communications, then it can also work for non-mobile communications such as broadcasting to fixed objects (like household radio, telephones, telephones, and computers). It could put land links for cable television and even the Internet onto the technological scrap-heap.  Low cost of new and more functional technologies kills old technologies.

Even though the analogy is a bit off, you might think of 5G as being more like the Wi-Fi service you get from your router than a phone service you get from the current network of towers.  5G will use small master stations, most of them located on short poles roughly every city block -- even closer as the technology fully matures.  The infrastructure will be individually cheap but massively expensive due to the shear number of locations that will be needed.  If you live in a city, you'll see this much sooner than you will in the suburbs. The exurbs and rural areas won't see 5G for a decade.

Once it's in place, it will support up to 1,000,000 nodes per square kilometer.  Nodes will be cellphones and similar smart devices, but the vast majority will be part of the Internet of Things.  Your car, for example, may consist of 10 to several hundred nodes communicating with other cars, the highway, your refrigerator at home (need more milk!) or finding you gasoline or a charging station.  Supporting old technology applications like video or phone service will be easy, and on-demand.  Eventually, everything will pass through these 5G networks, making them both useful providers and massive monopoly overlords.

If you think Facebook is excessively powerful, stand by for much worse.