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Millimeter-wave 5G Modem Coming Mid-2018 With 5Gbps Peak Download (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the faster-internet-promises dept.

Qualcomm is promising to launch its first 5G modem in 2018, even though basic standards for 5G have yet to be established, nor even which part of the radio spectrum it will use. From an ArsTechnica report: Dubbed the Snapdragon X50, the San Diego chipmaker says its new modem will be able to deliver blindingly fast peak download speeds of around 5Gbps. The X50 5G will at first operate with a bandwidth of about 800MHz on the 28GHz millimetre wave (mmWave in Qualcomm jargon) spectrum, a frequency that's also being investigated by Samsung, Nokia, and Verizon. However, the powers that be have far from settled on this area of the spectrum, with 73GHz also being mooted. In the UK, Ofcom is investigating several bands in a range between 6GHz and 100GHz. As the industry as a whole is a long way from consensus, this could be Qualcomm's bid to get the final frequency locked down well before 2020 -- the year that 5G is expected to reach any kind of consumer penetration. "The Snapdragon X50 5G modem heralds the arrival of 5G as operators and OEMs reach the cellular network and device testing phase," said Qualcomm exec veep Cristiano Amon. "Utilising our long history of LTE and Wi-Fi leadership, we are thrilled to deliver a product that will help play a critical role in bringing 5G devices and networks to reality. This shows that we're not just talking about 5G, we're truly committed to it."

39 comments

  1. Cap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And with a 5GB data cap, you can be scoring mad overages in just a few seconds :D

  2. How's this gonna work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You're getting damn near infrared at those wavelengths and they will be blocked by anything you can see and are completely line of sight.

    1. Re:How's this gonna work? by Shatrat · · Score: 4, Informative

      A few things will offset this. One is the trend towards a larger number of smaller base stations, whether these are just compact towers or microcells. Rather than a huge tower fed by a bundle of copper and dedicated fiber pairs, there can be smaller pole mounted cells fed by GPON.
      Another thing is the fact that these wavelengths will reflect and bounce around and the new technology will use that with beam forming and MIMO. All of the 5g experimental antennas I've seen are actually arrays of a large number of small antennas that are modulated independently.

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    2. Re:How's this gonna work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By "damn near" you mean over an order of magnitude away in the spectrum?

    3. Re:How's this gonna work? by Delwin · · Score: 1

      As compared to what's normally used for communication? An order of magnitude is 'damn near'.

    4. Re:How's this gonna work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To get that kind of speed at these frequencies would literally require dozens of access points for every square mile. Unless someone figures out how to rewrite the laws of physics all of the grandiose wireless claims are worthless for wide area use.

  3. Does it really matter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All this does is enable people to go through their data caps more quickly.

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  5. irrelevant. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    What's the point of a 5Gbps connection if it only causes you to exceed your monthly bandwidth allowance in 8 seconds?

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:irrelevant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They can implement 5 Mbps by turning the 5 Gbps connection on 0.1% of the time, allowing 1000x more people to use the same cell tower.

    2. Re:irrelevant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're assuming all traffic out of your machine is destined for the internet - what about sharing files with the person sitting next to you on the couch?

    3. Re:irrelevant. by Coisiche · · Score: 1

      And don't forget the manufacturer installed applications, they need bandwidth to do things you don't need to know about.

    4. Re:irrelevant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or just use QoS to prioritize popular speedtest websites while cutting on everything else.

    5. Re:irrelevant. by Nivag064 · · Score: 1

      Very relevant, just think how much more money companies can earn selling you extra allowance!

      Remember than companies are more important than mere consumers...

    6. Re:irrelevant. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, because we utilise 3G and 4G for local networking.... idiot...

  6. Google Fiber by 110010001000 · · Score: 0

    This will help in Googles quest to turn Google "Fiber" into fixed point wireless.

  7. and how many towers will get the 5G/5G fiber link? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    and how many towers will get the 5G/5G fiber link?

  8. yeah, right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can barely get 5 out of the promised 7Mbps off my 3.5G GSM device, I wouldn't hold my breath for 100Mbps or Gbps download speeds anytime soon...

  9. Why? by pla · · Score: 1

    blindingly fast peak download speeds of around 5Gbps.

    And why, exactly, would I want that? So I can hit my monthly data cap in a mere 16 seconds?

    Oh, but the carriers will increase caps accordingly? Bullshit. My cap went from "nonexistent" before 3G, to "10GB EVDO throttled down to unlimited 1xRTT" with 3G, to "10GB +$10/GB" with 4G. I don't see the carriers as likely to give up easy money just because new tech means we can rack up overage charges even faster.

    1. Re:Why? by Coisiche · · Score: 1

      I don't see the carriers as likely to give up easy money

      Well they have to milk the rest of the world for as much as they can get away with since pesky EU legislation prevents them from milking EU countries for as much as they'd like to.

  10. Re:and how many towers will get the 5G/5G fiber li by Shatrat · · Score: 1

    Many of them got a 10gbe link for the LTE rollout. The rest got 1gbe links, but those can be upgraded to 10G by swapping optics on both ends.

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  11. Re:and how many towers will get the 5G/5G fiber li by s122604 · · Score: 1

    I would image lots, especially in rainy locations.

    Anything above 10GHZ really starts getting affected by local conditions

  12. Penetration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only problem is at that frequency it might as well be light... it's not going to penetrate walls. People with T-Mobile have had issues with in-building reception because they only had spectrum near 2 GHz while the others have some 700-900 MHz spectrum which has better penetration. Now shift this to 28 GHz and have fun.

    It'll be great for picocells...

  13. Money against Healt by davegeetbf · · Score: 0

    Nobody cares about the waves? Do you really want to close interact with a device spreading a cople of watts at 100GHz?!? You know that today 5Ghz wireless devices are illegal in the most of world's countries? Here in Switzerland bands above 2.4GHz are not officially allowed for consumer use, but Money always win, and thankyou to USA again, our market is flooded of these devices and authorities does nothing because they can't limit the free market, or the USA will act some sanctions against us (ex: "if you don't sell our AP, we don't export mais to you...") Please stop making the world even worst, boorish US people

    1. Re:Money against Healt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody cares about the waves?

      Nope.

      Do you really want to close interact with a device spreading a cople of watts at 100GHz?!?

      Yep.

      You know that today 5Ghz wireless devices are illegal in the most of world's countries?

      Really? I didn't realize that most of the world had knuckled under to the hysterical idiots who think, with zero evidence on their side and much evidence against them, that tiny power levels at non-ionizing frequencies are anything to worry about.

  14. 5Gbps? by sims+2 · · Score: 1

    That's the limit of the usb 3.0 standard.
    Come on we should be using at least usb 3.1 for a 5G modem in 2018!

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    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  15. Things happeing now by pcjunky · · Score: 1

    Several companies have come out with 60GHz WISP gear that give full gigabit speeds now. At least one offering complete links for under $2k. They will have to go to some very high frequencies (millimeter wave) to get enough spectrum to do these things. 2.4GHz is over congested and 5GHz is getting that way.

  16. TSA cellebrates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So now there is a 5G standard?, great and it can scan me for err stuff as well as give me internet access, the future is truly bright, let me put on my Faraday shades

  17. Re:and how many towers will get the 5G/5G fiber li by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Assuming they're directly lighting fiber... if they're using transponders, muxponders, or an active Ethernet deployment it's a different ballgame.

  18. soo... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not up on the tech. Is there any way they could improve latency rather than bandwidth?

    1. Re:soo... by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      I'm not up on the tech. Is there any way they could improve latency rather than bandwidth?

      No. Unless you count the fact that it will only travel within a room, rather than to a base station a kilometer away. The speed of light being constant and all.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:soo... by rfengr · · Score: 1

      Only takes 3 us to go 1 km, which is as fast as you can go; wire or fiber slower. It's the electronics, specifically the signal processing, causing the latency.

    3. Re:soo... by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's usually high packet loss and upstream saturation that causes the latency. LTE has sub-100 millisecond latency, and even 3g typically is under half a second. Yes, by networking standards, that's huge, but not unusable. What causes cellular communication to be horrible is when you get into multi-second latency because three-quarters of your packets never make it to the tower, either because of over-the-air congestion, saturated upstream pipes, or multipath interference, all of which are caused by having orders of magnitude fewer towers than we actually need.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  19. Excuse my ignorance... by PCM2 · · Score: 1

    What in fact are they "testing" where it comes to the different frequency bands? Aren't the properties of electromagnetic waves pretty well understood by now? Shouldn't they be able to predict which frequency bands will work?

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    1. Re:Excuse my ignorance... by rfengr · · Score: 1

      Electromagnetic theory is well developed, but propagation of mmWave in urban environments was not.

  20. BURDEN OF PROOF by bussdriver · · Score: 1

    A) You can place the burden of proof on the public and decades of evidence proving something is unhealthy. Naturally, there will be corporate influence undermining progress like big tobacco which delayed progress for at least 20 years if not 30.
    OR
    B) You can place the burden of proof on the industry and government to show evidence something is NOT harmful.

    New tech now with unknown harm to millions or delayed tech with less harm. It is your government decides which path to go down.

    --
    Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
    1. Re:BURDEN OF PROOF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Radio is hardly "new tech" you idiot. I think I'll rely on physics, and the fact that we've utilized radio for more than 100 years, to tell me that non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation at low power levels is utterly harmless.

    2. Re: BURDEN OF PROOF by backslashdot · · Score: 1

      Basic high school level physics can show you that RF is non-ionizing. In fact you are hit with light rays which are of much higher frequency and it hasn't done anything. Until you start getting into UV, RF is harmless.

  21. Bet $40 billion they didn't miss something? by raymorris · · Score: 2

    Yes, they can predict pretty well.
    The phone companies can then spend $40 billion rolling out 5G nationwide.

    Before spending $40 billion, do you think it might make sense to spend $1 million testing to make sure your prediction was right? A million dollar test is literally less than 1/100th of 1% of the cost of full deployment. Like spending $1 to test drive a car before buying it.

    If you don't see that's obviously smart to do an extremely cheap test before spending tens of billions of dollars, I wonder, are you a California legistlator by chance?