5G networks are coming in 2020 .
I still remember the day when I first accessed the internet from a mobile device. It was in the early 2000’s, when I owned a Motorola T720 flip phone. Its data connection allowed me to download ringtones, wallpapers, even games from the web, which was quite an adventure back then. But it was also kind of slow, and even a single image took a long while to load, even when it was the size of a postage stamp.
Today’s 4G phone networks are literally over a thousand times faster, but even that won’t be able to meet the demand for data traffic of future applications. That is why a whole new generation of cellular communications standards is already in development, and 5G isn’t far from becoming the next hottest tech buzzword. But how did we get here and what is 5G going to change? Let us explain.
Back in the ’80s — when Billy Jean rocked the charts and the fanny pack was a must-have accessory — cellular phones were purely analog devices. Kind of like high-tech walkie-talkies, they were made strictly for voice calls and could not transmit digital information. Not even a text message, for that matter.
The Nokia 2110 was one of the first popular 2G phones
Texting capabilities came to cell phones in the early ’90s, with the deployment of second-generation cellular networks, which were all digital. The 2G era also saw the arrival of data services to cell phones — email, multimedia messages, and yes, downloading pictures and ringtones from the internet.
Launched in the early 2000’s, 3G networks allowed even faster data exchange. This enabled face-to-face video conversations, the kind of which people had only seen in Star Trek and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. But users weren’t in a hurry to jump on board the 3G wagon. Even the first iPhone, launched in 2007, was still a 2G device.2007, was still a 2G device.
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