Network | Where is the United States in its race to seize the 5G market?

Experts have been hyping up 5G's gigabit speeds for several years - for example, you can download a movie in just a few seconds, and this year 5G is finally becoming a reality. Last year, Verizon, the largest mobile operator in the United States, began testing 5G to launch home broadband services, and the second largest operator AT&T also brought 5G to more than a dozen cities across the United States.

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This year, companies are really going to launch 5G wireless networks and phones that can run 5G.

Verizon will turn on its mobile 5G network in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis on April 11, and its first 5G smartphone (sort of) is the Moto Z3. On March 14, the Z3's component 5G Moto Mod will be available for pre-order, which will enable 5G connectivity for the Moto Z3. Verizon said that any of its premium plans can add 5G service, and the cost may be an additional $10 per month.

Samsung's Galaxy S10 5G may be the first true 5G phone (without modification), but other phone makers, including LG, Huawei and ZTE, have announced 5G phones of their own.

"5G will be adopted faster than 4G, even though 4G is already very fast," said Ignacio Contreras, Qualcomm's 5G marketing director, at the company's summit in late 2018.

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New network standards mean more than just faster smartphones. Higher speeds and lower latency will enable great experiences in AR and VR, connected cars and smart homes — any field that requires machines to constantly communicate with each other without lag will open up new possibilities.

"5G will be the post-mobile phone era," said Robert J. Topol, general manager of 5G business and technology at Intel. "But 5G phones will be the first to be launched because they are already an important connection point in our lives."

Here are some of the things you can expect as 5G develops:

A quick overview of the 5 5G events discussed in this article

• Verizon will launch its mobile 5G network in parts of Chicago and Minneapolis on April 11. The first compatible phone will be the Moto Z3, and while it won't have 5G capabilities out of the box, it can be retrofitted with 5G connectivity via the 5G Moto Mod, available for pre-order starting March 14.
• Samsung will release a 5G version of its flagship S10 on Verizon's 5G network in the first half of this year. The device will feature a 6.7-inch display and six cameras, two of which come with depth-sensing TOF sensors for improved AR experiences. LG will launch its own 5G phone, the LG V50 ThinQ 5G, which will be released first on Sprint, the third largest mobile operator in the United States.
• Sprint just announced that it will launch a 5G network in a handful of cities in May, and Verizon has already made some announcements about its 5G service at CES 2019. AT&T has been criticized for its misleading 5G Evolution logo, which looks a lot like 5G — but actually has speeds closer to 4G. T-Mobile is targeting a 5G launch in the second half of this year.
• Phones are starting to appear powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855. This mobile system-on-a-chip combines the X50 5G module, but phone makers will still have to use a separate LTE module. The Qualcomm X55 will integrate both networks and will be available later in 2019. Qualcomm is eyeing a chip that can incorporate 5G into future products so that phones (and other devices) can offer 5G connectivity.
• Apple will reportedly wait until at least 2020 to launch a 5G smartphone, preferring to wait until all initial operational issues have been resolved and 5G has become generally available.

「The current situation of 5G」

Members of 3GPP, the body responsible for writing wireless connection rules and standards, agreed on the first 5G standard details at the end of 2017. The non-independent specifications of the 5G new radio standard cover the 600-700 MHz frequency band to 50 GHz millimeter wave. The agreement paves the way for hardware manufacturers to start developing mobile phones with built-in 5G modules. However, the non-independent standard details that were finalized only apply to 5G developed with LTE as the anchor.

In June 2018, 3GPP finally completed the standard specifications for standalone 5G, and network operators are now debugging the software using equipment that complies with the full standard specifications.

It’s important to note that 5G devices must work well with existing LTE networks, because in areas where 5G coverage is spotty or non-existent, the new networks will be optimized for available LTE connections. That’s why the non-standalone standard details came first.

Companies like Qualcomm and Intel are developing 5G modules for phones, cars, smart home devices and other yet-to-be-built gadgets. These devices are still being tested to make sure they work with network operators and infrastructure.

Qualcomm said that a total of 20 operators around the world will launch 5G in 2019, including all major operators in the United States. 20 equipment manufacturers are ready to use Qualcomm's 5G components in their equipment.

These components include the Snapdragon 855, which, in addition to improved performance and power efficiency, adds 5G connectivity in the form of the X50 5G module (which was launched back in 2018). Also being used is the X24 LTE module on the Snapdragon 855 processing platform, which can support download speeds of 2 Gbps on networks that support Gigabit LTE.

The starting point of these two modules is to allow 5G devices to maintain fast connections even if they have to fall back to the current LTE network. The newly released X55 module combines LTE and 5G and will enter the mobile phone market at the end of this year. Qualcomm said that X55 will also extend 5G connectivity to devices other than mobile phones, such as laptops and cars.

How prepared are U.S. wireless carriers?

The earliest 5G deployments in the U.S. will be for fixed wireless devices, similar to the wireless broadband we use in our homes.

In October 2018, Verizon, the largest operator in the United States, launched the Verizon Home 5G service in a few cities, including Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento, and announced that the 5G mobile network will be put into use in 2019, and 30 cities will be connected to 5G service by the end of the year (Verizon did not specify which cities will be included). In the first half of this year, Samsung's Galaxy S10 5G with Verizon contract will be released in Verizon channels (Verizon will also launch LG V50, but that phone will appear in Sprint channels first).

At Qualcomm's Technology Summit in December 2018, Verizon's Chief Network Engineering Officer Nicki Palmer described the company's current progress as "full speed" toward achieving 5G mobile networks. Meanwhile, during Verizon's CES 2019 keynote in January 2019, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg showed in a live demonstration that its download speed reached 900 Mbps - not the ideal 5G gigabit speed, but it's pretty good.

In 2019, the second largest operator AT&T will launch 5G wireless services in 12 cities in the United States, including Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, etc. Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, etc. have just been announced to join the cities with 5G coverage.

But don't confuse 5G with the 5GE logo on AT&T phones. 5GE stands for "5G Evolution," and is AT&T's expanded service with LTE technologies like 4X4 MIMO, but it doesn't quite reach the speeds we've come to expect from 5G (or even the current Verizon 4G service).

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AT&T's first 5G device is made by Netgear - it's not a smartphone, but a mobile hotspot. AT&T's Nighthawk 5G mobile hotspot uses the same frequency bands as its LTE version, but has the added bonus of 5G capabilities. Last October, AT&T completed the first 5G connection between a mobile hotspot and its 5G network.

Similarly, Verizon is working with Inseego to produce its own 5G hotspots. Last December, at Qualcomm's tech summit in Hawaii, both AT&T and Verizon offered 5G network trials -- though the tests didn't really offer anything close to 5G speeds.

As for Sprint, the third largest operator in the United States, it plans to launch a 5G network in early 2019. However, the operator is currently increasing its network capacity and using massive MIMO, or using multiple transmit and receive antennas at base stations to increase capacity and improve LTE speeds. These measures will lay the foundation for its 5G deployment in 2019. In January, Sprint said it had completed the first data transmission of 5G on a commercial network.

Sprint also just announced its 5G plans at MWC: service will begin in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas in May, followed by Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, and Washington. Sprint's first 5G phone is the LG V50 5G, but Samsung's Galaxy S10 5G will also be available through Sprint channels after its exclusivity period on Verizon ends.

T-Mobile plans to launch 5G in 2019 and achieve nationwide coverage in 2020. Neville Ray, chief technology officer of T-Mobile, said that the company has launched 600 MHz equipment that can be used for 5G, and once 5G is ready, T-Mobile only needs to push a software upgrade.

At MWC last February, Ray announced that T-Mobile would lay out 5G equipment in 30 cities in 2018, starting with New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas. During this year's show, Cnet hinted in an interview with Ray that T-Mobile would postpone the launch of 5G to the second half of 2019 due to a lack of compatible partner phones. T-Mobile refuted this statement. But it is clear that T-Mobile's 5G work will be mainly concentrated in the second half of this year.

"How are mobile phone manufacturers preparing?"

Now that chip manufacturers and operators are working towards 5G, it's time for mobile phone manufacturers to take action.

"5G requires new devices," AT&T Vice President Mansfield said. "Users' existing devices do not support 5G. We plan to ensure that there are initial models that support 5G by the end of this year, and will continue to add new models in 2019."

This means that even once the 5G standards are finalized, the phone you buy now won’t be compatible with 5G networks. This is something to consider if you’re planning on spending a lot of money on a new device.

And if you're planning to upgrade to a new iPhone, be aware that Apple plans to delay the release of its 5G phone until 2020. According to Bloomberg, Apple is waiting for mobile operators to work out all the kinks that come with the 5G launch in 2019, and would rather consumers have a 5G experience before the 5G Apple phone is released.

Still, most manufacturers are counting on 5G to revive stagnant smartphone sales in recent years. “I think 5G will bring an upgrade to the entire smartphone industry this year,” Park Il-byeol, chief technology officer and president of LG Electronics, said at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show.

OnePlus also said it will be one of the first phone manufacturers to load Qualcomm's new generation Snapdragon 855, which supports 5G. The Galaxy S10 5G will be released first on Verizon and will then spread to other carrier channels. In addition to LG's V50, Huawei and ZTE will also launch 5G phones, but it is not clear whether these phones will enter the US market.

You also have to be prepared to pay more for a 5G phone. No one has confirmed pricing yet, but OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has speculated that OnePlus' 5G phone could cost $200 to $300 more than its current devices, which now cost $549 for the OnePlus 6T. OnePlus is already known for keeping costs down on its phones.

There's a phone out there that's already capable of 5G speeds -- if you give it a little help. The Moto Z3, which comes out in the summer of 2018, can be used with a future 5G Moto Mod -- just snap it onto the back of the phone. On a demo of Verizon's temporary 5G network in Hawaii, the Moto Z3 took 17 seconds to download a 1GB file, and once commercial 5G networks are up and running, downloads should be even faster.

「The future of 5G beyond mobile phones」

Being able to enjoy the latest data is the dream of every smartphone owner, but people around me are even more excited about the potential that 5G will unlock for the next generation of wireless devices. From smart homes to self-driving cars, all the connected devices in your life will be able to communicate with each other at high speeds and with low latency.

"5G and AI are the forerunners of the data age," said Steve Koenig, senior director of market research at the Consumer Technology Association. "The self-driving car is the symbol of this data age because it has only one task - driving, and the vehicle itself generates a lot of data. There are various sensors collecting a lot of information to model the environment as it moves. It also gets data from other vehicles about road conditions, such as weather conditions, and it may be connected infrastructure. There is a lot of data behind this task, which is why we need large capacity and low latency."

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With 5G, AR and VR headsets are finally becoming more mainstream. Apple and other companies are reportedly developing AR glasses to supplement smartphones — or even replace them. 5G is making all of this possible.

At last year's Mobile World Congress, Ericsson demonstrated how much faster and lighter smart glasses could become through 5G, as the glasses are no longer weighed down by various components and can rely on external hardware for computing power.

AR glasses and VR headsets have yet to break into the mainstream, but tech companies are betting that these devices will eventually replace smartphones. With 5G, that could indeed happen.

Last year, Verizon and Nokia tested live interactive VR and 4K video streaming over a 5G connection outdoors using Verizon's millimeter wave spectrum, and found that they were able to achieve 1.8 Gbps throughput with a latency of about 1.5 milliseconds. Such a small delay is basically imperceptible to humans, which can make the VR experience much more comfortable and quite attractive.

But don't get too excited, there is still a lot of work to be done, including interoperability trials to ensure that 5G and hardware and infrastructure work together to ensure that 5G coverage is not just concentrated in high-density cities.

Ron Marquardt, vice president of technology development at Sprint, also said, "I think the hype right now is about what will happen 10 years from now, not what will be possible when 5G is launched."

5G made a lot of progress in 2018. And while 2019 looks like a big year for 5G, 2020 will probably be when the fifth generation of wireless connectivity really starts to take off.

Original title: The Truth About 5G: What's Coming (and What's Not) in 2019, author: Caitlin McCarry