5G Explained | How 5G Works and its Pro's and Con's

5G internet. We've been talking about it for a while and now it's finally starting to arrive. It's a revolutionary kind of internet that promises to change everything from your phone, to home internet, to more futuristic fields like self-driving cars and even remote surgery, but 5G's also been in the headlines lately for a lot of bad reasons with bizarre conspiracy theories and rumors.

So, to help clear things up, we’re going to explain to you, what exactly 5G is, how we got here, what the technology behind it is, and any real concerns that might exist around the new technology. So, what is 5G? Well, 5G or fifth generation is that the next step in mobile internet technology. It's what all of the next wave of phones and tablets are going to use for speeds that are even faster than the LTE networks that we already have.

Now, our news editor and reviewer, Chris Welch, has actually been testing all these networks for awhile already, so he can actually tell you what it's like to use these speeds today. - Okay, so all the big US carriers are well underway with rolling out 5G, and by the end of this year, you should be able to get it wherever you reside within the US, but what 5G means on each carrier is different. Speeds are different, coverage is different, so for the previous year everyone been testing out all the networks out there, Verizon, AT& T, T-Mobile, and Sprint is now part of that, just to see how fast it is and what a difference it makes in your day to day life.

So let me try and explain. Now Verizon's 5G is blazing fast; you'll get download speeds of over one gigabyte per second. That is up to 10X faster than most home Wi-Fi connections. You can download an entire season of a television program in only minutes, but the matter is coverage. Verizon's 5G is very, very spotty. It's there on one street and gone subsequent , and indoor coverage is just about nonexistent. 

You've seen it in those commercials as ultra wideband 5G. But the issue is, the signal can't travel very far, so in an city where it wants to roll out 5G, Verizon's got ta put up all these nodes all over the town , and that is not really practical to try to to nationwide, so afterward this year, Verizon's also gonna activate its low-band 5G network.

So for now, Verizon's5G network isn't really worth upgrading to a new phone for, unless you've got anode like right outside your apartment or your house. T-Mobile has the foremost comprehensive 5G plan of all the US carriers. It's also using millimeter wave on the high end, plus Sprint's mid band spectrum within the middle, and it's own low-band 5G at the bottom . Now Sprint's mid band spectrum is far faster than LTE is today. I was in Texas testing their 5G network and that i got speeds of 300megabytes per second.

And unlike with Verizon, I could calculate keeping that 5G signal wherever I went. Think of mid band because the sweet spot for 5G. It's much faster than phones today, it's not quite as fast as millimeter wave, but it makes a big difference day to day. And last is AT&T which has a similar strategy to Verizon, in that you get the high-band millimeter wave and low-band sub six 5G, but they're missing that middle part of the cake, that mid band spectrum, so you will have really fast speeds in small parts of some cities and somewhat faster speeds than your phone today everywhere else. Now none of this is to be confused with AT&T's fake 5G, which is called 5GE. You've probably seen it in your phone's status bar at times.

That's just fast LTE. It's got nothing to do with real 5G that's rolling out right now. These are still the early days of 5G. We've seen less than a dozen phones hit the market that offer these new faster speeds and some of the early ones were very buggy and would overheat in the summer. Now those concerns, along with battery life, have largely been over come with Qualcomm's latest chips. We've seen those chips in the Galaxy S20, the LG V60, and the OnePlus 8, all really great phones, but we're still waiting for that first iPhone from Apple that has 5G and that's rumored to come later on this fall in 2020.

The earliest generation mobile technology, 1G networks, were launched back in the 80s. Unlike the opposite generations, 1G networks used analog signals and will really only do voice calls. You've probably seen phones that use 1G networks just like the Motorola Dynatac, that classic oversized telephone from 80s movies.

2G networks kicked things up a notch. More bandwidth meant that additionally to calls, users could start sending data, enabling text messages, SMS, and even pictures, MMS. Later versions of 2G phones could even access basic internet, a bit like the foremost famous 2G device ever sold, the primary iPhone. 3G networks offered even more bandwidth and faster speeds, and 4G LTE, which is what most of our current phones use, made truly fast wireless internet a chance .

They're all supported the same science, which suggests that it's time to talk about the spectrum . this is often the EM spectrum, the diagram of the various sorts of electromagnetic wave that exists. EM radiation is what we call a wave of photons traveling through space and every one EM radiation, be it AM radio waves, X-rays, infrared, or maybe light fall somewhere on the spectrum .

The difference between harmful X-ray radiation and benign AM radio, is simply the number of energy it's . Now, on the right end of the spectrum are low energy radio and microwaves, which are characterized by low frequency and radio emission lengths. As we travel up the spectrum, wave lengths get smaller, frequencies get higher, and therefore the amount of energy being transmitted gets higher too. AM radio, as an example , broadcasts between 540 and 1600 kilohertz. It's low energy, but those low wave lengths can travel incredibly far, up to 100 miles. And relying on atmospheric conditions, they're going to potentially span the planet by bouncing off the atmosphere. But again, quality suffers.

We hear sound originating at that very moment, hundreds, or maybe thousands of miles away. - Go up the spectrum though, to FM radio which broadcasts at between88 and 108 megahertz, and you've got got more bandwidth, which allows for higher quality broadcasts, but your usable range decreases. it is the same basic idea with cellular data. New generations allow us to reinforce our transmission technology, which ends up in increased bandwidth and better frequencies, which successively leads to faster speeds.

But at the core, it's all the same basic technology and thus the differing kinds of 5G, actually illustrate this very well . as an example , take AT&T and T-Mobile's low-band networks which Chris mentioned . They're within the 600 megahertz and 850 megahertz bands, effectively the same area of spectrum as existing LTE, but the actual fact that they're new bands of spectrum that aren't already clogged up with existing customers, combined with new transmission technologies, means these low-band 5G networks offers faster speeds than LTE, albeit they're basically using an equivalent spectrum bands as LTE.

And that low-band nature, also means they're going to transmit over how wider range than other kinds of 5G. It's why T-Mobile, for instance , can claim to possess nationwide 5G coverage, while Verizon is stuck to only a few of street corners. Next is mid band 5G, which is actually just employed by Sprint and now T-Mobile, which owns Sprint. Located at the 2 .5 gigahertz range of the spectrum, it offers faster speeds than low-band 5G, but it's more limited range.

For comparison, 2.5 gigahertz is about the same area of the spectrum as your home wifi. It's higher frequency and more bandwidth than low-band 5G, but it isn't gonna be quite the speeds and frequency that you're going to get from millimeter wave, which is that the ultra fast 5G.

Now these are located around 30 gigahertz, much higher frequency than the opposite kinds of 5G which they provide blazing fast speeds; those Chris mentioned earlier from Verizon and in limited areas, T-Mobile, and AT&T, but those radio waves also are really small, between one and 10millimeters, hence the name, which are literally really bad at passing through objects like walls or buildings, which suggests that the range is incredibly limited.

Some are completely absurd, like the idea that 5G somehow caused the coronavirus, but the simple answer is that 5G is basically the same as any other type of cellular radio technology and that we have already got a reasonably good concept cellular radiation isn't harmful. - in fact people are concerned a touch about possible effects of the formation of cancer if you employ your mobile tons or if you have been exposed continuously to radiation from cell towers.

There's a lot of studies available on that sort of effect, but that's never been proven that indeed there is a carcinogenic effect of expose to radio frequency radiation. There's also concern that exposure to radio frequency fields, for instance the higher fields, the higher frequencies that 5G's got to use, that that may result in adverse affect on the immune system, and that people may be more susceptible for the, for infection by the COVID-19 virus.

There's no proof, no indication whatsoever that there's any effects on the immune system from expose to radio frequency fields. - Now, I know that cellular radiation falls into the non-ionizing portion of the spectrum. Can you talk a little more about the differences between non-ionizing and ionizing radiation? - Ionizing radiation has a very high energy content and because of that, it is possible that if you are exposed to that sort of radiation, that chemical bonds in the body, that they are damaged and broken, and that may result in uncontrolled cell growth, which may result in the formation of cancer.

This sort of effect, breakage of chemical bonds, is something that is not possible with non-ionizing radiation, with the type of radiation that cellular technology uses, because the energy content of that sort of radiation isn't enough to end in such chemical breakage. Heating is the only proven effect of exposure to radio frequency radiation.

Some of the growing pains are just switching to a new generation of technology. Things like more expensive plans. That faster data speed means that you can burn through your data cap really quickly, and that's something that we're gonna have to figure out. The first wave of 5Gphones were costlier , although prices are beginning to come down. And of course, there's just building out the networks.

The low range of mid band and millimeter wave networks, means that it'll take longer and cost more to build more towers, to get that kind of coverage that people expect. Qualcomm, for example, has made 5G the default in all of of its new chips and flagship phones in 2020, from companies like Samsung, Apple, OnePlus, are either already shipping with 5G, or expected to have it by the end of the year. 

And more importantly, none of these issues are really new. The transition from 2Gto 3G, or from 3G to LTE, saw similar problems and therefore the tech industry was ready to solve them. The only difference is that we're a lot more reliant on our phones than we were 10 to 15 years ago, and that's why these issues seem so much more important now. But the key thing to recollect is that 5G and therefore the technologies around it, aren't really new.

For the latest tech, tips & tricks, top-notch gadget follow Not a technology’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.