World's First 5G Field Trial Delivers Speeds of 3.6Gbps Using Sub-6GHz 55
Mark.JUK writes: Global Chinese ICT firm Huawei and Japanese mobile giant NTT DOCOMO today claim to have conducted the world's first large-scale field trial of future 5th generation (5G) mobile broadband technology, which was able to deliver a peak speed of 3.6Gbps (Gigabits per second). Previous trials have used significantly higher frequency bands (e.g. 20-80GHz), which struggle with coverage and penetration through physical objects. By comparison Huawei's network operates in the sub-6GHz frequency band and made use of several new technologies, such as Multi-User MIMO (concurrent connectivity of 24 user devices in the macro-cell environment), Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA) and Filtered OFDM (F-OFDM). Assuming all goes well then Huawei hopes to begin a proper pilot in 2018, with interoperability testing being completed during 2019 and then a commercial launch to follow in 2020. But of course they're not the only team trying to develop a 5G solution.
Okay, so 5G isn't 5G (Score:2)
Just like 4G isn't 4G and 3G isn't 3G. Other than corporations continuing to rip people off here, what is new?
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I thought he was (hopefully jokingly) suggesting that the G in 5G should stand for Gigabit.
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I always thought that G stood for 9.8 metres per second squared
(32 feet per second squared for the metricaly challenged
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Nope, that'd be g. 5G is clearly 5 times the universal gravitational constant.
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No no no. We French fucks at SI dictate that G is for giga.
You can never use G for anything other than giga. g is for gram, but we don't use g for the base unit of mass, we arbitrarily use kg as the base unit for mass even though k is the prefix for 1000. However, 1000 kg isn't kkg, as our own rules dictate, but Mg, which is megagram. Note the capital M, we use big letters when we're scaling things up in magnitude and small letters when scaling them down.
Except for k, as noted previously, because K is f
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I forgot that Slashdot would eat all the Mus (the squiggly ass u).
Anytime you see a missing word or something in the above, picture a u but with a little dingleberry hanging off the back end.
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I always thought that G stood for 9.8 metres per second squared
Warning: Physics Pedant Alert.
No, small "g" is the gravitational force at the earth's surface.
The big "G" (not to be confused with the big script G on Cheerios boxes) is the gravitational constant
F = Gm(1)m(2)/r^2 where m(j) are the two masses in question.
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Re: Okay, so 5G isn't 5G (Score:1)
Yes. I, too, wish I could consume my monthly cap in 2.4 seconds and then rack up a bill exceeding the GDP of Africa within minutes.
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As much as Slashdot is a guilty pleasure of mine, downloading the web page in 2 nanoseconds as opposed to 4 nanoseconds makes no difference, especially when the majority of the wait time is the rendering processing that occurs on the device.
Re: Okay, so 5G isn't 5G (Score:2)
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Japan will have 5G by 2020 (Score:4, Interesting)
Japan is planning to have a 5G network operating in time for the 2020 Olympics. We are going to see a lot of new tech pushed for 2020 because of that opportunity to show it to the world. Faster trains, 8k TV broadcasts, lots of new EV and hydrogen cars...
sub-6GHz frequency band (Score:3)
"Huawei's network operates in the sub-6GHz frequency band"
Is that the unlicensed 5Ghz band?
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Then how do you interpret 'sub-6Ghz' ?
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You're a kid, you're a squid (Score:3)
Huawei? Those shape-shifting squid things
As opposed to shape-shifting kid things?
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Extending LTE to unlicensed spectrum at 5GHz is an enticing prospect
Extending LTE-Advanced to unlicensed spectrum is a major feature of 3GPP Release 13, due to be frozen in March 2016. Previously this was referred to as LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U), but 3GPP uses the name LAA to reflect the role of licensed spectrum in its operation.
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I've heard that 5G was to use both the 2.4 GHz and 5GHz unlicensed bands simultaneously, to the detriment of home routers. source [unwiredinsight.com]
Extending LTE to unlicensed spectrum at 5GHz is an enticing prospect
Extending LTE-Advanced to unlicensed spectrum is a major feature of 3GPP Release 13, due to be frozen in March 2016. Previously this was referred to as LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U), but 3GPP uses the name LAA to reflect the role of licensed spectrum in its operation.
Yep - I think the phrase 'sub-6Ghz' was to avoid the conflict around the attack on our 5Ghz wifi
We are screwed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like what will matter much more(unless somebody is planning to use the same tech for highly directional point-to-point wireless links, in which case raw speed is pretty useful); is how well these '5G' arrangements handle congestion; and how efficiently the amazing-fancy-theoretical-peak-throughput can be divided across a large number of users. Unless you are made of money, the problem with wireless data isn't so much how slow it is; but how costly it is(in part because of scarcity, which more efficient RF technology might actually alleviate, the 'because we can' part is a separate issue); and how it has a habit of just collapsing in a screaming heap under heavy load.
If the impressive peak bandwidth numbers indicate a larger pool of usable transmission capacity extracted from a given chunk of spectrum, fantastic, that is progress. If they simply represent what you could do if a single client used every doesn't-play-well-with-others trick in the book to get better speeds, that's utterly useless.
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And nobody will get access to enough data to use those new towers.
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My cable ISP has caps too. I really don't mind caps, provided they aren't too low. They have to find some way to give people high speeds and somehow restrict people from saturating the connection 24 hours a day.
For me, a faster connection isn't just about more throughput, but more about having individual pages load faster, not waiting for videos to buffer, and being able to play a game on release day, rather than have to wait until the next day for the game to finish downloading.
For a mobile connection, I
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the problem with wireless data isn't so much how slow it is; but how costly it is(in part because of scarcity, which more efficient RF technology might actually alleviate, the 'because we can' part is a separate issue)
I'd like to know the difference between the high costs due to real scarcity and the high costs due to profit-taking.
I'd love to see a heat map of cell sites based on RF congestion and backhaul congestion to get an idea if the limits being imposed are really about site limits or mostly about extracting maximum profit.
I wonder if this will benefit 4g (Score:3)
Should hit my monthly cap in 1/3 of a second (Score:2)
I have the Verizon 1GB/month plan. With these speeds, I should be able to hit the cap within 1/3 of a second. Not sure that "5G" really benefits anyone.
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Not exactly, its GigaBytes per month and GigaBits of speed.
You'll have 8 times as long until you hit the plan cap, so 8/3 of a second or 2 and 2/3 seconds.
Way better ;-)
Again I have to say, this is like having a Ferrari that you can only drive a few minutes a month.
The cognitive dissonance between freaking tiny bandwidth caps and huge speeds just keeps growing.
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That's because the 5G service isn't for you.
It's for the carriers. Along with the added bandwidth comes added capacity - especially if it cannot be exploited by the customers due to data caps.
Your requests just get on/off the network faster leaving space for another user to do the same.
Huawei? (Score:2)
Don't they basically just rip off Cisco hardware and software?
What happened to 4G? (Score:2)
And don't try telling me that LTE is 4G.
Sub 6Ghz (Score:1)
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YUes, they will "accidentally" degrade your WiFi, but don't worry, when you lose your nearly free connectivity, they will happily $ell you $some.
Isn't 5G more than just speed (Score:1)