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WITH 4G ONLY around for a few months, tests on the next generation mobile communications are beginning to pick up with Japan being the latest country to do so.
Japanese carrier DOCOMO is currently trialing 5G connections with six mobile manufacturers including Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson.
The carrier expects to collaborate with other companies in its efforts to test a wide range of 5G mobile technologies before its released commercially.
DOCOMO will begin indoor trials at its R&D centre in Yokosuka this year before with outdoor field trials planned for next year.
Findings from the trial will be shared with research institutes and at international conferences to help contribute to 5G standardisation, which is expected to begin in 2016. It will also use its findings to help research aimed at developing future technologies.
Samsung has a bit of experience in the field, having tested 1Gbps 5G hardware in South Korea last year.
At that time, the company said it had witnessed data transmission of more than one gigabit per second over a distance of two kilometres. Such speeds would allow users to download an entire movie in one second.
5G is a next-generation cellular system which is said to be up to several hundred times faster than existing 4G networks. It’s expected that 5G will see a commercial release in 2020.
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Where I live in Meath we just about get 2G.
You have 2G, here in kilmessan we’re still on F!!
Is there really a place called Kilmessen ?
Yep, it’s the capital of Meath.
Ah now, I lived on the Meath/Westmeath border and we got 3G reception and we lived in a bog!
Sorry to be the nerd guys, but 1 Gbps means 1 gigabit per second, not 1 gigabyte per second. A gigabit is equivalent to 125 megabytes of data which is about 1/8 of a gigabyte.
So it will take 8 harrowing seconds to download a movie.
I don’t have time to wait 8 seconds
Torrent fans are gonna love this :-)
1Gbps would be completely excessive for mobile devices. You could stream HD at a fraction of that speed. Maybe for UHD though, but on a mobile device UHD would be wasted.
Lots of thumbs down – possibly due to “1Gbps would be completely excessive for mobile devices.” which should have read “1Gbps would be completely excessive for video on mobile devices.”
No need for at the minute. But by the time it gets here, who knows what it’ll be needed for?
Better quality video and audio over Skype and Facetime. Easier to make video calls from remote locations.
Audio virtually uses no bandwidth… Video cameras also a low bit rate on most phones. Its way overboard. Interesting how the cell management will work… A stadium of people streaming matches back to mates
Yes but my point is that video and audio won’t have to be as compressed as they are currently. Be great to eliminate the lag in Skype calls too.
Good point about football matches. Sky must be shitting themselves. A few blokes with google glasses could stream the whole thing.
I think the biggest issue here is battery life. 4G is fantastic as 5G will be for speed but unfortunately with increased download/upload speed you’re going have more applications downloading/uploading more frequently and therefore using more data and more battery power.Solve the battery issue and you’re on your way imo!
5G aims to make better use of shared bandwidth and better coding on the radio interfaces, which will be matched on the infrastructure side by improvements on the device side. You can see this by the LG G2 increasing battery while improving speeds (13.5 hours of usage) and the qualcomm/ericsson uplink compression feature. Apple devices (5S is ~5hours in same test) have always concentrated on being more like a PC than a mobile, so you are on your own trying to figure out if battery life will be important to them. They had a history of f3cking up the performance for everyone else in their previous attempt to get over bad battery life (see fast dormancy), so don’t hold out hope!
And Ireland is still waiting to get 4g
I’ve had 4g for ages, no noticeable difference between it and 3g for me though.
I’m on 4G, and it is better than 3g, but it’s nowhere near the 40 meg speed I was sold. It’s usually around 10.
Ye I’m happy enough with my 3G. What I really want is some fibre
Get about 40mb in most of Dublin, but drops to 15-20mb inside buildings.
Have you tried All Bran?!
Jimminy , muesli and bananas every morning will get you your daily allowance.
Yeah, it’s probably not true 4g and instead a amped up 3g that is being sold as 4g. I live in Asia, Hong Kong specifically, and there is an always on 4g system here. Being able to stream full shows while on a train and not using wifi is great.
Sadly, Ireland is really lagging behind on this.
I’m 21 km from city centre and still do the Jamaican accent “can you hear me, can you hear me now?”
That’s mad ted.
6G with the Fukushima add on……
4g is fast enough for now but think of it, 6 or 7 years ago we were marvelling at the speed of 3g and saying the same thing that it’s not needed.
In 2020 we will very likely need it. File sizes are constantly increasing in size.
4G has only been in Ireland for a few months, it’s been available elsewhere for years.
Lazy, again.
I get shockingly poor mobile reception from 3. They say 4G is on the way but I rarely get 3G. Who is the best operator?
None of the above!!!
The japs are at it again…
Funniest comment of the week.
There’s 4G 200m away from my house and G in the house. I need to get a stick that’s 200m long and put an aerial on it. Sorted.
I’d say phone companies should concentrate on making batteries that don’t need to be charged 27 times a day before they invent more stuff to drain the battery!
Read the small print people 4g doesn’t have to be faster than 3g it’s in the t’s&c’s as stated by Comreg
As someone all ready pointed out can a phone’s battery last long enough to watch a movie ? and will you go way over your data allowance downloading it ?
Wooohooo keeps me in a job best news i herd all day!
You have to remember that the systems designers are working 5 years ahead of us in terms of the applications they see for 5G. They wont be looking at the current terminals we have (ie mobile phones/tablets) and current limitations on what is connected. Battery life will be less of an issue when 5G becomes commonplace as anyone like myself who was around for the origibnal analogue systems, saw the handset technology progress through GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS/HSPA, HSDPA+ and 4G/LTE will have seen handset batterylife go from <12 hours standby and <1 hour talk to what is now a mini-PC in your pocket with a couple of days standby and several hours talk. We will probably see many more agreements such as the Amazon 'whisper net' with the various operators, where all our cars will have a connection/sim pre-installed etc etc.
Will you all deck off…my phone is broken
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