5g explained. Almost.
November 2020
I expect you’ve heard of 5G, which you probably know has something to do with mobile phones, but what is it really?
It all relates to how equipment (not just phones) connects with other equipment wirelessly. The G stands for generation, and in the last 40 years we have evolved from 1G to 5G. 1G gave us sound, 2G gave us text, 3G gave us mobile internet and 4G made everything about ten times faster.
5G, when it is properly available, will make everything another ten times faster still, offer far more capacity and reduce the delay between sending and receiving (the ‘latency rate‘) to as close to zero as makes no difference.
Whilst this will undoubtedly improve our ability to watch films online whilst on a train, 5G’s main benefits are commercial. For example, it will allow new farming techniques that use drones to plant, monitor and water crops, and service the many more things, like self-driving cars, fridges, baby monitors and fire alarms that are daily being connected to the internet.
However, there are the numerous practical difficulties. The most obvious is that 5G achieves its high speeds by using ‘millimetre waves’ (mmWave), which are extremely high frequency radio waves. Unfortunately, they only travel a few hundred yards and then only between points that have an uninterrupted line of sight. They can't go through walls and struggle with bad weather. So, for the moment, 5G often has to rely on the same radio waves that 4G uses, which travel further and aren't frightened of rain but are not as fast.
At present there aren’t anything like enough masts even to provide a national 4G service, and a 5G network would need many more than that. In order to provide universal 5G, we’ll need a gigantic new infrastructure of masts, all a few hundred yards apart at most.
So, the phone companies are spending fortunes installing masts all over the place. That's fine in a town, but getting 5G established in the countryside is going to be challenging. It was suggested that church towers might be used, which sounded like a good idea, but the churches lost interest when the phone companies said that they were not prepared to pay rent. Quelle surprise.
Finally, there is the question of spies. The James Bond industry has become very exercised about the possibility that Chinese made 5G network equipment might have secret electronic back doors, allowing the Chinese to listen in, or even take proactive action to control equipment that is using the networks.
There is actually no current evidence that such back doors exist, but nonetheless our Government has declared that we should buy our 5G equipment from European companies such as Ericsson and Nokia. This may make us feel safer, but it will add billions to the cost and years to the time it takes to create a 5G network here.
In the meantime, phones that can make the best of the 5G network, when you can find it, are currently far too expensive.
Despite all this, in my view, and in the words of Sellar and Yeatman, 5G is ’a Good Thing’ or at any rate could be. It might hugely benefit many areas of life, more than we know at present. In healthcare, for example, it will enable remote surgery, and it might even make autonomous cars safe. But it’s years away from being universally available in the UK, if it ever is.
One final point. Despite some widely shared Facebook based conspiracy theories, there is no evidence of a link between 5G and coronavirus . None at all. Not a sausage. Viruses cannot travel on radio waves or mobile networks. So no need to wear that hat lined with tinfoil, at least not yet.
A few useful links:
Public Health England’s assessment of ‘5G technologies: Radio waves and health: Click here
Full Fact, the fact checking charity’s breakdown of Coronavirus myths, including the 5G rumour: click here
Wikipedia page on millimetre waves: click here
Offcom’s well written explanation of 5G: click here
