5G Flavors: mmWave is good, low & mid-band closer to 4G

Wireless has been getting better at a ferocious rate since at least 2013. Verizon calculates its cost per bit has been going down 40%-50 every year and expects that to continue. This has been true and is a good thing. “5G” has become a meaningless marketing term; most of the big advances happened in the 4G standard. (Massive MIMO, Carrier aggregation) Wireless keeps getting better, whatever the name or the “G.” 

Millimeter wave does get to ~ 3 times the speed because there’s a lot of empty spectrum up there. It has more capacity, so the carrier can offer much more bandwidth.

No 5G has very low latency today, contrary to many claims. Latency in 4G is 25-60 ms, mostly 40-55 ms in the U.S. The average 4G latency in Singapore is 29 ms. 5G today has little effect on latency.

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