5G is coming and it will likely impact consumer lives as soon as next year. While faster data rates and better reliability are expected, we don’t know in reality what actually will actually be available to consumers and when.
U.K. telecom Three, which is heavily invested in 5G, believes that 5G will be reliable enough that consumers can finally ditch landline phones for good.
Three has recently completed a number of infrastructure investments in preparation for 5G, spending about $2.6 billion to improve its network and expand capacity to meet future demand for data.
As part of the network upgrade, the telecom has signed an agreement to roll out new cell site technology to prepare major urban areas. Three has built a super-high-capacity dark fiber network that connects 20 energy efficient and highly secure data centers.
“Also described as wireless fiber, 5G delivers a huge increase in capacity together with ultra-low latency,” said Dave Dyson, CEO of Three. “It opens up new possibilities in home broadband and industrial applications, as well as being able to support the rapid growth in mobile data usage.”
Three said 5G will be so reliable that homeowners and businesses will finally have a genuine alternative to fixed-line fiber services. Three said the first commercial quantities of 5G smartphone and home broadband devices are expected by the second half of 2019, although Verizon has already introduced what it claims to be the first 5G broadband last month (questions linger as to whether or not this network is true 5G). Sprint said it plans to have its first 5G phone available in the first half of next year.
Other deployments by Three include a fully integrated, cloud native core network in data centers that will have an initial capacity of 1.2 TB/s — a three-fold increase from today’s capacity — with the ability to scale further. Three has also rolled out carrier aggregation technology on 2,500 sites in the busiest areas for improved speeds.
