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UK and Germany To Collaborate On 5G
First time accepted submitter Niranjan Nallapothula writes in with news of an agreement between the UK and Germany to develop 5G technology, as well as boost momentum for the Internet of Things. "Britain and Germany will team up to work on developing the next super-fast mobile network, 5G, United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron told the opening of the world's biggest high-tech fair. Cameron said the initiative is one of three areas that he wants Britain and Germany to collaborate on to "pool ideas, share data, innovate, and to lead on the next big ideas" in what he dubbed as being 'a world on fast forward.'"
Shouldn't we concentrate on developing 4G first?
I suppose there is always a place for more bandwidth, but the limiting factor is going to be spectrum space here. 5G is most likely going to increase bandwidth performance, but at what cost? Using 4G you can stream HD video now, what more do we actually need? For mobile devices, I'm not so sure there is much more necessary.
As always, the issue really is spectrum space. Where will it come from *this* time? Cell spectrum is generally well used (at least in urban areas) so there will be a huge push to find something else. Problem is that all the available spectrum is way up there, where solid state devices start having serious design issues and the power required is huge. You thought your 4G phone battery died quick...
Research is great, I'm just not thinking there is much practical that will come of this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
For a cabled connection to your desktop, GB ethernet is probably more than you will ever need. How many HD movies can you see at the same time anyway? Is 5G not going to hit the same barrier? Sure there will be some niche applications, but John Doe doesn't need to be able to download an entire movie in 10 seconds. He definitely doesn't need to be able to use his "unlimited data" for a whole month in under a minute.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Germany would be better off going it alone, unless they want NSA and GCHQ fingerprints all over it.
They probably do want NSA fingerprints all over it. You don't think that they let us run the "Dagger Complex" right there in the open because they are still just that terrified of the commies, or their economy is desperately dependent on our foreign aid or something?
Mod parent down, for he is shortsighted and hates technology. Bigot!
It seems a significant number of the readers here would rather say "64kb is all the memory anyone will ever need", because they are too lazy to try and think rather than just knock any and every innovation mentioned on Slashdot.
As far as 5G - "why" the answer is use (consumption) will always expand to fill capacity. The question is not WHY the question that needs to be answered is how can we put that additional capacity to use.
Great, so I can have 4K video instead of wimpy 1080p, but voice calls will still be barely intelligible.
I shall dub this network "The world barely keeping up with demand."
More like "demand barely keeping up with offering".
The truth is, consumers don't want to upgrade to the latest and greatest shit every 6 months in an economic slump.
It's like super high definition TV or Blue-Ray discs: people aren't finished investing in the previous generation technology that a new one comes along. Not to mention, the contents - movies and TV shows - are still shit, and people aren't interested in high definition shit anymore than they want low def shit.
In the case of 4G - and now 5G - it's even worse, because the price of data traffic over these networks hasn't come down nearly as fast as the available bandwidth has increased: it still costs a testicle per gigabyte, only with 4G, you lose a testicle in seconds instead of minutes. No thanks.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash