What is 5G and how fast is it?

If you’ve spent much time on this site or other mobile-focused websites, then you’ve probably been seeing 5G referred to with increasing frequency.

There’s a good reason for that – it’s now available in the UK, albeit only in a few areas, and is set to be far better than 4G, let alone 3G. But what exactly is 5G? How do you get it? And how fast is it? You’ll find answers to all of those questions and more below.

What is 5G?

5G simply stands for ‘fifth generation’, as it’s the fifth generation of mobile networks, just as 4G is the fourth generation and 3G is the third generation. So it’s a new generation of mobile networks, complete with new infrastructure.

With each new generation data speeds have increased and that’s no different with 5G. We’ll talk in detail about the speed below, but it’s worth knowing that speed isn’t the only difference. In fact, 5G could power all sorts of use cases that just aren’t possible on 4G. Examples of them can also be found below.

What’s so good about 5G?

• Very fast
• Low latency
• Network slicing
• Alternative to fibre broadband

There are lots of advantages to 5G. It’s very, very fast for one, but it should also have much lower latency (the delay in waiting for the network to respond to a request). There’s also set to be a lot of spectrum available for it, meaning plenty of capacity, so it should be able to easily cope and provide a smooth, reliable experience no matter how many people are using the network at the same time.

These things combined should allow for lots of new and improved use cases, from autonomous vehicles to holographic and 8K videos and super-smooth online gaming.

5G could also help in industry. It could for example power smart cities and revolutionise agriculture. Imagine for example a 5G-powered drone monitoring crops and livestock, sending data back to a control centre in real time.

5G could also prove a real alternative to fibre broadband in many places. It has the potential to be faster, particularly in regions that don’t currently get fast broadband. It should also be cheaper and simpler to install, with no engineer visits needed.

Plus, 5G will be capable of ‘network slicing’, which means partitioning parts of the network to make separate virtual networks that can be completely customised to the needs of the user, rather than the ‘one size has to fit all’ approach of 4G and 3G.

How fast is 5G?

That’s the question everyone wants the answer to, but right now the answer isn’t entirely clear, and it will probably change over time.

EE – the first and at the time of writing only network in the UK to offer 5G – says to initially expect average speeds of 100-150Mbps more than 4G is capable of, meaning around 200-250Mbps. However, the network adds that some users in some areas could see speeds exceed 1Gbps. And this is just phase one of EE’s 5G roll out. Over time, speeds are likely to increase.

Ofcom has estimated an ultimate download speed of somewhere between 10Gbps (gigabits per second) and 50Gbps.

4G meanwhile tops out at around 100Mbps (megabits per second). In fact, in practice, you can’t get more than 90Mbps speeds with 4G in the UK, as no network supports more than that, and average speeds are far, far lower.

The OpenSignal Mobile Networks Update in October 2018 reported average 4G download speeds of 28.9Mbps for EE, 21.92Mbps for Vodafone, 18.78Mbps for Three, and 14.61Mbps for O2. 3G meanwhile is around five times slower than even that, with speeds often of just a few megabits per second.

So even initial 5G speeds look to be on average around 6-7 times faster than average 4G speeds.

In turn, that would mean apps and files download 6 to 7 times faster, web pages load instantly, and all the use cases mentioned above start to make sense.

Of course, it’s not just download speeds that will be better on 5G. Upload speeds will too, with those potentially ultimately reaching around 10Gbps according to estimates. As with download speeds, that’s not the case on day one, but expect a similar boost over 4G speeds.

And then there’s latency. We mentioned this above, but this plays into speed. Latency is how long it takes a network to respond to a request, and can be one of the main causes of lag in online games. It stands at around 120ms (milliseconds) on 3G, 50-60ms on 4G, and theoretically just 1ms on 5G.

That doesn’t just mean gaming will be smoother, but is also vital for anything where lag isn’t an option, such as self-driving cars, which need to make constant and immediate adjustments.

How does 5G work?

Whether you’re using 3G, 4G or 5G the core technology is similar in that data is transmitted wirelessly over radio frequency between you and the nearest compatible mobile mast. With 5G, higher frequency bands will be used in many cases than with 4G or 3G as this is capable of higher peak speeds and there’s a lot more spectrum available in these bands, making for a lot more capacity.

The first 5G auction in the UK saw Three, EE, O2 and Vodafone all come away with varying amounts of this spectrum in the 3.4GHz band, but there will be more auctions in future, and the networks have their pre-existing spectrum that they can fall back on.

One thing to note though is that this high frequency spectrum doesn’t travel as far as the lower frequencies currently in use for mobile, nor is it as good at passing through solid objects like walls, which means there will need to be a lot more infrastructure. That means rather than (or as well as) towers dotted miles apart, there will also be lots of ‘small cells’, that is, small, low-power base stations, clustered much closer together.

Beyond higher frequencies and more, smaller infrastructure, 5G will rely on an assortment of technologies, such as MIMO (multiple input and multiple output), which would allow more than one data signal to be transmitted and received at a time.

Beamforming will also be used. This will allow networks to steer the 5G signal more precisely, so that it goes where it needs to and doesn’t cause interference.

When will the UK get 5G?

The first 5G network has now launched in the UK, so you can potentially get 5G now.

EE is the network in question, and it has initially brought 5G to large parts of London, Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester. Later in 2019 it plans to expand its 5G network to cover parts of Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol.

It has also said that it will be switching on over 100 5G sites every month. Looking ahead into 2020, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Derby, Gloucester, Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, Wolverhampton, Worcester, and more should get EE 5G.

Vodafone should be second in line, having said that it will switch 5G on in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and London on July 3rd.

Then, later in 2019, it’s set to bring 5G to Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Guildford, Newbury, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington and Wolverhampton.

Three and O2 have also both said they’ll be launching 5G networks in 2019, but haven’t given exact dates yet. Three also hasn’t said where it will launch, but we know O2 will initially bring 5G to Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London.

Will my phone work with 5G?

Not unless you recently upgraded to a 5G-ready handset, of which there are very few so far.

A handful such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, LG V50 ThinQ, and Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G are now either out or available to pre-order though, with a number of others expected before the end of the year.

There are two things to remember though. Firstly, your current phone will still work fine over 4G and 3G even once 5G arrives in your area. Secondly, it could be many years before 5G is available across the majority of the UK, so there’s no immediate need to upgrade, especially if you don’t live somewhere that initially gets 5G coverage.

In fact, it might be worth waiting. The first 5G handsets are in many cases more expensive than typical phones, but prices are sure to drop in a year or two. But if you just can’t wait there are a few options.