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Europe Agrees To Agree With Everyone Except US What 5G Should Be

Posted by samzenpus on from the here-comes-the-naysayer dept.

itwbennett writes: Following agreements signed by the EU with South Korea in June 2014 and with Japan in May 2015, the EU and China "have agreed to agree by the end of the year on a working definition for 5G," reports Peter Sayer. "About the only point of agreement so far is that 5G is what we'll all be building or buying after 4G, so any consensus between the EU and China could be significant," says Sayer.

2 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Of course, this is natural. by mrvan · · Score: 3, Informative

    ** or is that knots?

    My dear Sir, miles are a distance unit and knots a speed unit: a knot is a (nautical) mile per hour.

    Interestingly, while imperial miles originate in a "biometric" (roman miles were 1000 two-pace steps), nautical miles fit very well in the "geometric" spirit of the SI: a nautical mile is one minute of arc measured along any meridian, ie the distance between the poles is 180×60 = 10,800 NM. The meter was originally defined as 1/10,000 of the distance between the equator and the pole, so these definitions are quite close. Although the definition of both the NM and the m have changed a bit as they were standardized, the international definition of 1NM=1852m is pretty darn close to the expected 20,000 / 10,800 = 1851.85m.

    Note that as a European I use metric exclusively: for me, a pound is 500g and an ounce is 100g, and a cup is something I put coffee in. That is, until I step foot on a sailing boat, when suddenly the only units that makes sense are knots and miles. Metric is for landlubbers, I guess :)

  2. Re:What is the point of this article? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Mod parent wrong? About everything? The CDMA technology in UMTS is based on the Japanese standard FOMA, which only came slightly after IS-95 and was developed while most US phones were still analog. UMTS does not use 2G GSM TDMA for voice, but runs voice over the same W-CDMA interface as data. It can do both because the air interface can interleave multiple communications streams (i.e. the protocols are better designed). There are many carriers with some or all coverage only in W-CDMA UMTS that have no 2G GSM at all. And OFDM isn't really very much like CDMA at all, as other posters have noted. Also, GSM TDMA slots are assigned to calls, not handsets, so non-transmitting phones do not in fact consume bandwidth.