Samsung Testing 5G Phones With 1gbps Download Speed

Gumbercules!! writes "While many smartphone users are still on 3G and are waiting for 4G to be available, Samsung is now testing 5G networks, capable of getting speeds up to 1gbps. Obviously, we're years away from seeing these in the wild (the company is shooting for 2020) but it's still an amazing improvement over what many people are experiencing now."

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What is this 5G thing?

[ras]

Must we really publish brain farts from a fanboi on slashdot's front page? This "news item" is completely substance free. No description of technology, no links, no science, no official announcement from someone you might believe. It uses terms that don't exist - there is no 5G - or at least the mob responsible for naming GSM, 3G, 4G, LTE, LTE Advanced doesn't have one yet. And there is nothing particularly special about 1Gbps download speed. LTE Advanced already does that if is has around 67MHz of bandwidth available, and you are the only one using the cell.

So let me see, what is there that could justify its position on the front page? Oh I see now - a baseless jibe at a Apple. That's OK then.

Re:What is this 5G thing?

[tlambert]

The Samsung testing was in the LMDS frequency band, which the FCC has auctioned off already in the US to cable providers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Multipoint_Distribution_Service

The FCC has already licensed this band for satellite downlink:

http://spectrumwiki.com/wiki/display.aspx?From=disp&f=28499999999

Which means it can't be used for 5G in the US like they are doing with NTT DoCoMo in the Samsung experiments.

Re:5G with 10GB/mo cap

[ls671]

From TFS: "capable of getting speeds up to 1gbps"

That's 0.125 GBps so 8 seconds for a GB. You need at least 80 seconds to hit your 10GB cap which is more than one minute. This sounds much fairer now.

Re:Spectrum?

[rossdee]

"I do not know what is the limit of the "wireless spectrum" if there is any"

There is legal limits (controlled by the FCC)

There is technology limits

The atmospere absorbs some frequencies

There are practical limits - sure you can theoretically get lots of bandwidth in the X-Ray and gamma ray end of the spectrum, but do you really want one of those next to your ear?

Re:Ya well the ITU is a little silly with this

[Almir43]

It's funny you should say that, since the entire point of LTE is that it is a Long-Term Evolution platform. It isn't that the "standard was set too high" - it's more that the standard was designed to support high speeds so the wheel would not have to be re-invented as technology progressed.

You can either create a new set of supporting standards and technologies every few years, or you can develop a set of standards that scales up as hardware allows better speeds. So it's only if one entirely misunderstands the purpose of LTE, that the standard would appear to be set too high. The gradual progression that Samsung demonstrates in the article is what LTE-Advanced was all about and is still firmly in 4G territory. 5G is just horrible marketing.

Re:Spectrum?

[WhiteDragon]

I do not know what is the limit of the "wireless spectrum" if there is any. Before this limit is reached, I guess just updating all hardware gears that transmit/route more efficiently is all that is needed.

The limit is given precisely by Shannon's Law, which gives a mathematical limit on the amount of data that can be sent over a given amount of bandwidth. Spectral Efficiency is the amount of bandwidth available in a given wireless spectrum.