The Journey To 5G

5G is highly anticipated, but why? The 5G wireless network technology standard is among the fastest and most robust technologies the world has ever seen. It is capable of lower latency, rapid speeds and massive capacity.

The telecom industry has made significant progress since the first mobile phone call back in 1973. Most countries have begun gradually adopting 5G, ushering in the drive to Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics.

Did you know? As far back as December 1st, 2018, South Korea became the first country to offer 5G.

In order to truly understand the countless benefits that businesses can derive from 5G, it is helpful to understand how the technology evolved.

5G Evolution

Every successive (G)eneration of wireless standards – abbreviated as “G”

The Evolution of Gs

Think about a time you wanted to download a movie or an episode of your favourite series to watch on your commute. For a 2 GB movie, it would take you over an hour if you were using a 3G network. With 5G, the time gets cut down to less than a minute!

How did we get here?

1G: The First Generation

Wireless technology's first generation, retroactively named 1G, was launched by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in Tokyo in 1979. By 1984, NTT had rolled out 1G to cover the whole of Japan.

In 1983, the US approved the first 1G operations and Motorola’s DynaTAC became one of the first ‘mobile’ phones. Other countries like Canada and the UK rolled out their own 1G networks a few years later. 1G used frequencies in the 800 MHz spectrum and helped users with the first analog cell phones.

However, 1G technology suffered from poor coverage, bad sound quality & lack of roaming support between operators, since different systems operated on different frequency bands. Calls were also not encrypted, so anyone with a radio scanner could drop in on a call.

But the DynaTAC still managed to achieve 20 million global subscribers by 1990. There was no turning back; the success of 1G paved the way for the second generation...

2G: The Second Generation

2G was launched under the GSM standard in Finland in 1991 which came with the expansion into the 1.9 GHz spectrum. For the first time, people could send text messages (SMS), MMS (multimedia messages), and voicemail.

This bandwidth expansion marked a significant milestone in the capabilities of cell phones, 2G’s transfer speeds were initially only around 9.6 kbit/s, By the end of the era, speeds of 40 kbit/s were achievable and EDGE connections offered speeds of up to 500 kbit/s. Despite relatively static speeds, 2G was able to revolutionize the mobile business space and forever change the world.

3G: The Third Generation

3G was launched in Japan in 2001 by NTT DoCoMo and in the US in 2002 by Verizon, which expanded the frequency range into the 2.1 GHz spectrum, the main motive behind the 3G to regulate the network protocol that used by vendors.

In the case of wireless network generation standards, the baselines are defined by an industry organisation known as the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), which, as its name suggests, was put together to help define global standards for 3G cellular networks 20 years ago.

The core technology of 3G was MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output), which expanded the network's bandwidth and upped its device capacity. 3G users were able to access data from any location in the world as the ‘data packets’ became the driver of web connectivity.

For the first time, international roaming services became a real possibility. 3G’s higher data-transfer rates enabled functionalities like image sharing, GPS location-tracking, and mobile web browsing.

4G: The fourth Generation

4G is also known as the Long-Term Evolution (LTE). It was first deployed in Stockholm, Sweden, and Oslo, Norway in 2009.

4G brought in added frequencies in the 1.7 GHz, 2.1 GHz, and 2.5 GHz including previous 600 MHz, 700 MHz spectrums. 4G network speeds could reach up to 400 Mbps for stationary users, which introduced high-definition video streaming, video conferencing, and video gaming.

4G LTE has significantly reduced latency and increased efficiency.

5G: The fifth Generation

In 2008, South Korea developed a 5G R&D program, while New York University founded the 5G-focused NYU wireless in 2012. Three South Korean telecom service providers – KT, LG Uplus, and SK Telecom- were the first to roll out live commercial 5G services in December 2018.

5G operates across three bands: millimeter-wave (mmWave) high-band, mid-band, and low-band mmWave. Speeds on mmWave networks are expected to be around 10 times faster than on 4G LTE networks

5G is expected to provide very high levels of peak downlink throughout performance-ranging approximately from 4 Gbps on the lower end to 20 Gbps (under ideal conditions) on the higher end. With 5G you can expect real-time monitoring, low-latency communication in remote areas, development of "smart cities", remote surgeries, telemedicine, and even remote vital sign monitoring telemedicine that could save lives.

5G is assured to act as the mobile network of the future, powering mission-critical IoT services

5G's key differentiator is its network slicing capabilities, 5G allows data to be separated or sliced for different applications such as one slice for low-latency applications in transportation infrastructure, another in machine-to-machine IoT services & another in internet use.

5G Solutions | Copy Cat

We offer Application and Network Intelligence Portfolio and unique, pre-packaged customer use cases that can help MSPs to optimize their 5G investments and generate new revenues.

Our solutions smooth the transition to 5G while driving high-quality application experiences with automation and actionable insights. This is all done while supporting multiple deployment models - physical, hybrid, edge, and cloud.

Today, instead of having to resort to expensive fiber, operators can take advantage of highly integrated, dual-transceiver radio designs, which can support two narrow E-Band channels with higher system gain, combined with rain resilient microwave bands such as 11 or 13 GHz, to deploy much longer high-capacity paths, with up to 99.999% availability for their most important traffic.

Copy Cat also helps MSPs with our solutions for BSS/OSS offering that includes Convergent Billing platform, Prepaid BSS, Integrated Billing, Charging & Policy Control, Channel Partner Management, and Interconnect Billing.

Get in touch with us to learn more!