I remember people saying it would be faster than most wired connections.
In: Engineering
There are several different types of 5G, and they are not made equal; Low band 5G(slowest one), mid-band 5G/ sub-6 5G(the most common), and mmWave 5G (the fastest one).
In order to get faster data speeds, you need to have a shorter wavelength. Mobile phones operate on radio waves to communicate with the cell towers, and the shorter the wavelength, the faster the data you get.
The three different types of 5G all use different wavelengths/frequencies. Low band is the longest wavelength, and so it’s the slowest. It’s not really meant for your phone, but it’s meant for things that don’t transmit a ton of data (like an internet connected fridge).
Mid band 5G is very similar to 4G, but you can get faster speeds through it (I don’t know precisely how). It has a similar range to 4G. And because of this, it is the most commonly used for cell phones when you aren’t in the city.
mmWave 5G is the one that gets marketed all the time as the “instant internet connection”. This is only found in cities, and not very many. As for why? I will explain this in a bit.
You may be asking, “why don’t we make all the places have 5G mmWave?”, and the issue that prevents this from becoming reality is that the shorter wavelengths don’t go as far, and won’t provide enough range for it to be utilized outside select cities.
5G mmWave’s range is so poor, that you’d need to put several different “internet points” on just one street. Going behind a building will slow your connection. 4G doesn’t do this.
4G on the other hand, has a much longer wavelength, and thus has a much longer range of about 10 miles/16 km compared to 100ft for mmWave 5G. And because mid band is so similar to 4G, it is used in a lot of places and just gets the 5G label stuck onto it. It’s faster than 4G, but not by a crazy amount.
TL;DR; there are several different types of 5G, and they’re all varying speeds. Phone carriers marketed the fast one, but because there are several different types of 5G everybody expects all the 5Gs to be equal.
In short, inaccurate marketing.
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