The 5G era is coming. Will the WiFi you use every day disappear?

When it comes to WiFi, everyone is familiar with it. Especially after the emergence of smartphones, the speed of WiFi development can be described as "rapid", and WiFi coverage is available almost everywhere. So much so that now no matter where people go, the first thing they ask is often "Is there WiFi here?" or "What is the WiFi password?"

Indeed, in the past when mobile Internet was still immature, Internet access charges were extremely expensive, so many people would choose WiFi to access the Internet in order to save money. Some people would even use freeloading tools to secretly access the Internet of their neighbors.

However, if I say that WiFi may disappear in the near future, would you believe it?

Recently, there was a piece of news saying that WiFi will be "killed" by mobile networks. According to British media reports, a recent report by OpenSignal, a mobile data research organization, pointed out that the average speed of mobile networks in 33 countries around the world has exceeded the speed of WiFi connections. With the official commercial use of 5G networks in 2020, this trend will become more obvious, because 5G networks bring high bandwidth and low latency, which have greater advantages than WiFi. WiFi may be completely replaced in the future.

Internet speeds are faster than WiFi in more and more countries

Macsoor Hanif, chief technology officer of Ofcom (Communications Authority), also stressed that as mobile networks become increasingly powerful, WiFi is gradually being marginalized.

Of course, the increase in mobile network speed is not just one of the reasons why WiFi will disappear. Another very important reason is the reduction in Internet access charges.

I don’t know if you still remember that in the era of feature phones, data traffic was very expensive when we were surfing the Internet. A few dozen MB of data traffic could cost dozens of dollars. You might watch a few short videos or long articles with pictures and text, and your data traffic would be lost without you noticing. Often, your data traffic would be used up in less than a month, and many people often needed to purchase data overlay packages to surf the Internet.

Until a few years before the advent of smartphones, data traffic was still very expensive, so many people would choose to look for WiFi everywhere to access the Internet, and various free Internet access tools would grow rapidly.

However, with the gradual increase in the intensity of domestic Internet speed and fee reforms in recent years, mobile Internet access charges have also been declining. In addition, there are various Internet package cards, such as Tencent Dawang Card, Xiaomi Mifen Card, Ali Dawang Card, etc. As long as you use these package cards, you can use certain limited mobile phone software without limit.

At the same time, with the large-scale deployment of base stations, the coverage of 4G signals everywhere makes it more convenient for us to access the Internet.

Therefore, compared with the past, even if we don’t use WiFi, using mobile networks can be faster and cheaper. In this case, many people are too lazy to connect to WiFi, because most people usually use only a few mobile apps. If you can use them unlimitedly, why bother to use WiFi?

Moreover, the speed of some WiFi networks is not even as fast as that of 4G mobile networks. If there are many people using it, it will be as slow as a snail, which provides a very bad experience.

What's more, public WiFi itself has risks. Some public WiFi requires you to register various personal information before you can access the Internet, which may cause information leakage. There are even some people with bad intentions who deliberately hack into your phone and steal information and property when you are not paying attention. With the emergence of risk awareness, many people have gradually stopped connecting to public WiFi.

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It seems that with the improvement of mobile network speed and the reduction of Internet charges, it is possible that WiFi will no longer be needed in the future. Macsoor Hanif, chief technology officer of Ofcom, also gave advice to the WiFi industry: either upgrade to 5G or wait to be marginalized.

What do you think about this? Do you think WiFi will disappear in the future?