Will 5G Internet Replace Cable?
There is tons of excitement surrounding 5G and all of the awesome things that it can do. Mainly, people are excited about the mobile portion of it, bringing even quicker speeds than what LTE was able to do. This means that there will be a better high-definition video, and you’ll be able to move around detailed photos and videos a whole lot easier.
But one of the other neat things about 5G technology is that it can be used to bring the Internet to households as well. That, naturally, has a lot of people wondering — will 5G Internet replace cable? Follow along below and find out.
The benefit to 5G Internet
One of the big appeals for 5G is that it’s not only for smartphones and mobile devices, but can be used to light up homes with fast wireless service as well. This is what most carriers are calling Fixed Broadband Service. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile will be offering it, though it may not be available straight away. T-Mobile itself actually plans to extend its fixed broadband service to over half of the United States’ households by 2024.
This type of speed should provide household devices with Internet speeds north of 100 Mbps.
But why Fixed Broadband Service, when households already have Internet access? There are still a lot of people that fall through the cracks. Besides, one of the difficulties is that rural America has always had is slower connection speeds. Fixed Broadband Service should help with that.
In fact, T-Mobile is estimating that over 20% of its fixed broadband service will be used by rural households where modern technology might be more challenging to access. That would bring people in rural America access to more things like digital education, social media, high-definition video, and so on.
It’s incredibly fast
Fixed Broadband Service should be pretty fast as well. We’re looking at the aforementioned north of 100 Mbps in some areas, particularly in the regions that are a little more populated. Regulators say that peak download speeds should sit at around 2.5GB per second; however, once again, there are a lot of factors that make those speeds a little slower. It still keeps it faster than 4G, though.
Latency
One major benefit to 5G Internet is the low latency and ping rates. This means that just about everything is quicker on 5G Internet — there’s much faster response time from the server. Whether you’re trying to downloading files, share data, upload videos, play online games, stream movies, and so on, it all should be a much quicker process than before.
Cheaper cost
5G Internet to your home should, in theory, be significantly more affordable than regular cable Internet. In traditional cable Internet, there are tons of expenses factored inside — fiber, the actual hardware that communicates between the Internet provider and the home, wiring, and so on. Much of all that added cost disappears with 5G.
When will 5G come your way?
So when will 5G Internet be available? Just about all three major carriers — Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T — are planning on early 2020 for launching their 5G networks nationwide. That’s for mobile 5G, but actual 5G Internet should be available for your household around the same time. That said, it might not be as widely available as initially hoped.
For example, T-Mobile mentioned that it had hoped to bring its 5G Internet to half of United States households by 2024. That indicates that the 5G Internet rollout might be a little slower than actual 5G data. That said, the time it’s going to take may vary.
As of this writing, 5G hasn’t totally taken off yet. Once it launches nationwide in early 2020, we’re likely going to see a much better look at timetables and when we can expect to see 5G Internet really take off.
Verdict
As you can see, there is a lot to look forward to with 5G Internet for households. It’s going to make the Internet so much more accessible and may even help people cut down on household costs, especially if they can bundle it in with existing wireless plans.
The cool thing about 5G Internet is that it should only get better. Telecom providers are working hard at getting the most out of 5G, so as they upgrade equipment and come up with better ways to produce the signal, households should actually see their speeds increase over the years.
It’s likely not going to be super popular where cable Internet is well established. That’s going to be way faster, with many folks reaching up to 1GB per second of Internet speed. It’s going to be way more popular in underserved communities and rural areas where Internet technology is a little more scarce.