Is the era of 5G connectivity upon us? The government in South Korea says so, and it's sinking $1.5 billion into upgrades it says will make mobile communications there 1,000 times faster than they are today.
But not so fast. Literally, not
so fast. As was the case when smartphones and other mobile devices first started
having 4G slapped on them, the term 5G is as much a marketing slogan as anything
else -- at this point, anyway.
And if technophiles in the United
States are hoping Korea's announcement means warp-speed data connections are
coming their way in the near future, they're going to be disappointed.
Regardless of the network's
capabilities, any wireless carrier wanting to take advantage of them also would
need costly upgrades to their systems. Users would have to purchase new devices
that could access it. And even then, there's no guarantee that Netflix or
similar companies would make their own data available at speeds that live up to
the Korean government's tantalizing vision of an entire movie downloading in a
single second.
All that said, don't count Korea
out. Arguably the most wired country in the world, South Korea has led in
mobile adoption since the 1990s.
"We helped fuel national growth
with 2G services in the 1990s, 3G in the 2000s and 4G around 2010. Now it is
time to take preemptive action to develop 5G," the nation's science ministry
said. "Countries in Europe, China and the US are making aggressive efforts to
develop 5G technology ... and we believe there will be fierce competition in
this market in a few years."
