5g and You

The much anticipated fifth generation standard for cellular network communications, 5g, looks set to revolutionise the way we use the internet.

Vastly improved performance in three key areas will enable intensive tasks traditionally confined to a WiFi or cabled environment to be completed on the move, in addition to brand new workflows, products and services like the ‘Internet of Things’ that could not have existed under previous network architectures.

However, there are also technological drawbacks to 5g compared to the 3g and 4g (LTE) that we are used to, and more than one company involved in the rollout of 5g infrastructure across the world has been implicated in controversy. What do all of these factors mean for the way we conduct business, and live our lives?

The specification
The new 5g network specification is primarily concerned with achieving the following improvements over prior implementations:

1. Greater speed

   The much higher bandwidth of 5g connections is expected to provide worst-case bitrates in excess of 100 megabits per second to all users, and a theoretical maximum of up to 20 gigabits (20,000 megabits) per second in ideal conditions. For comparison, current 4g LTE networks provide an average of between 5 and 10 megabits per second, with peak performance approaching 50 megabits per second in perfect conditions. Google Fiber, the superfast fibre optic network operated by the global search giant, operates at 1 gigabit per second over a cable or high performance WiFi router.

   In other words, the ‘worst case’ 5g speed will be 2 to 4 times faster than the current average speed, with a ‘top speed’ around 400 times faster than the current 4g top speed.

2. Reduced latency

   Connection latency is a measure of the delay between a device sending a signal and receiving a response from the network, and is unrelated to connection bandwidth.

   A good demonstration of this is watching a Youtube video over your cellular network, followed by conducting a video call. Both videos will likely run at lower resolution than they would over WiFi due to bandwidth constraints, but you may also notice that your video conversation feels ‘laggy’ or desynchronised in a way that Youtube doesn’t. Your contact might take half a second longer to reply to you than you are expecting, and you find yourselves speaking over one another more than you would in person. This is the effect of latency; a fractional delay between you speaking words and your contact hearing them, compounded by the same delay in the other direction when they respond.

   5g network technology is expected to reduce latency to between 1 and 4 milliseconds, comparable to a good WiFi connection. 3g and 4g have average latency greater than 50 milliseconds. The benefit of this will extend to every real-time interaction performed on the network, from video and voice calls to online gaming and general web application responsiveness.

3. Many more simultaneous connections

   All wireless networks, from 3g and 4g cellular to WiFi and Bluetooth, suffer reduced performance in both bandwidth and latency in busy environments. This is due in part to increased congestion causing interference on whichever frequency band the network uses, and in part to the upper limit on simultaneous data transfers from a given antenna being reached. Interference reduces download speed as more pieces of whatever is being downloaded will arrive corrupted and must be reacquired, and reaching the simultaneous connection limit puts surplus connections in a queue for service, adding greatly to latency.

   5g network broadcasts are directional, allowing many more transmitters to be used in the same location without interfering with one another. This significantly raises the number of connections that can be maintained in a given area using 5g compared to the same area using 4g, alleviating the issues mentioned above.

So what does this all mean for the world of saving for retirement?
As with previous generations of mobile communication technology, we can expect 5g to drive up demand for faster and slicker ways to consume content – even about pensions. Online content about pension benefits has to be accurate and up-to-date but unless it’s also accessible in a way that’s in line with wider communication trends, then it’s at risk of looking old-fashioned and irrelevant.

Saving for retirement already has a bit of a ‘street-cred issue’ – especially for younger people – so failing to keep up with technology is a mistake our industry cannot afford to make.