Explain 5G To Me Like I’m 5 Years Old

5G is going to change the way that we live and work. It’s going to handle more connected devices and it’s going to be way faster as well. 5G started rolling out in the US, before it expanded to the rest of the world. 

Experts are saying that the potential of 5G is absolutely huge. If you can’t quite wrap your head around everything that 5G has to offer, then you are not alone. 

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How does 5G Work?

With 5G, signals happen to run over radio frequencies. This means that you have to update radios and all of the equipment that is on cell towers.

When companies build 5G networks, there are three ways of doing this. A lot of the time it’ll depend on the assets that the carrier has.

With a low-band network, it has a wide coverage, but it’s only 20% better than 4G. A high-band network can support super-fast speeds but the signals don’t travel too well and they can’t move through hard surfaces easily. Bang in the middle, you have mid-band.

This balances speed with coverage, essentially giving you the best of both worlds. Carriers who want to build 5G networks, to give people access, have to install a lot of cell sites.

These tend to be the size of a pizza box, and they put them on walls, towers and light poles. They tend to be very close to one another as well.

As this is the way it has to be done, you will often see superfast networks being deployed on a city-by-city basis. Eventually, most carriers will have a wide range of bands available so people can have both great coverage and fast speeds.

TL,DR: 5G is new technology that is constantly evolving.

What are the Benefits of 5G?

A lot of the hype around 5G has to do with speed. If you try to load up a video on your phone, or if you’re often streaming on YouTube, you’ll probably see the loading circle for a few seconds before the footage loads.

If you try and fast-forward the video then you may have to wait a few seconds as well. When the video finally loads, you may then have to deal with some lag. It’s to be expected, especially when you are out and on the go. 5G basically eliminates that.

It’s a faster connection so you can load what you want faster, and without drawbacks such as lag. Now that we understand that 5G is basically faster than what you’ve been using so far, it’s time to move on to connectivity.

Connectivity in the Home

5G allows for more connected devices when compared to previous networks. If you have kids or even housemates, then you may have experienced a stall in your Netflix connectivity when they are using the Xbox.

This is because your internet puts out a set amount of power, and each device that is connected will drain some of this power. If you have too many devices connected at once, then they are all competing and something has to give.

This leads to slow speeds, lagging or lack of connectivity altogether. The best way for you to get around this would be for you to upgrade your internet package, so you can get more theoretical power from your router.

Even though this example applies to WiFi, 5G works in a very similar way, but on a much bigger scale.

Connectivity in Public Places

Now, what happens when you’re out and on the go? What determines the “power” people can access? That’s where 5G comes in again, but on a bigger scale.

Imagine a crowd of people who are all connected to the city’s cellular service. With everyone being in one place, trying to connect to the same network, you can imagine how laggy the service might be.

Now take that same image, and apply it to a football stadium full of people. You have thousands upon thousands of people, who are in a confined space, trying to connect to a network. You also have the tech from the food vendors, who may be using digital software to log orders. You also have live replays which are being sent to the screens via WiFi.

With all of this in mind, it’s not hard to see that something eventually will have to give.

4G has been great so far, but as tech advances, more power is required and there is only so much to go around. Companies have also been limited in terms of what they can create because if they create something that is too demanding in terms of connectivity, it won’t be able to function.

A prime example of this would be self-driving cars. They require a monumental amount of power, and they also need exceptional speeds in terms of data. If there was any latency with a self-driving car, the consequences could be deadly, but 5G solves this issue.

It reduces the time it takes for a connected device to receive a signal. With 5G the time is virtually zero.

As 5G is rolled out, devices become more powerful, the limits of tech are pushed and new heights can be reached in terms of connectivity.

How Fast Can You Download with 5G?

The fastest 5G network is expected to be around 10 times faster than 4G.  Some experts believe that eventually, speeds could be around 100 times faster. That means you can download a 2-hour movie in as little as 10 seconds.

So there are many benefits to 5G and if you invest in it for yourself, you’ll soon find that it’s able to offer you so much in terms of speed, practicality and connectivity. 

Ready to be a part of the Circles.Life 5G revolution? Grab our plan upgrades here to experience it for yourself.