Why wait for 5G when you can have it today?
5G – the fifth generation of cellular communication technology, promises not just faster download speeds, but also lower latency – which will be required for the coming wave of technologies enabled by IoT.
However, there are challenges that exist in rolling out 5G infrastructure.
What are those challenges?
5G spectrum is expected to be auctioned towards the end of this year or the beginning of next year. The takers may not be very many due to the very high reserve price set by the government.
Telecommunication industry in India is a very cost-conscious one and all the providers are already reeling under revenue pressures. Expecting them to invest the reserve price in licensing the spectrum will be a tall order in the current scenario.
The reserve price set for 5G is considered to be 4X to 6X larger when compared with other countries. Add to this, 40% of spectrum since 2010 has remained unsold.
In terms of speed, 5G would increase the data transfer speeds by 10 times compared to the 4G infrastructure. The maximum possible data transfer with 4G is 12.5MB per second, whereas it would be 125MB per second in the case of 5G.
With 5G, downloading a 5GB movie would take you 40 seconds in comparison to 4G that would take 7 minutes. But, are consumers willing to pay a premium for this speed? Very unlikely.
So, while all the providers have readied themselves or readying themselves to offer 5G services, these challenges will still have to be sorted out before we see 5G in reality.
What do you do till then?
Imagine aggregating multiple 4G LTEs to get the kind of bandwidth that 5G provides. In essence, you need to aggregate 10 4G LTEs to get the 5G data transfer speeds. Do we have devices that can do this?
Our research shows that slightly more than 50% of the places in India aren’t covered by traditional Internet service providers using Fiber or Copper. Whereas, almost 90% of the places all over India are covered under mobility. So, 4G LTE aggregation makes a lot of sense to provide high-speed Internet connectivity across the country.
At VIVA, we offer a completely redundant and 100% fail-safe mobile Internet connectivity to our customers using 4G LTEs. We can connect up to four 4G LTEs and can aggregate all of them together to offer high-speed data transfer amounting to 50 MB per second. For more details on our solution, please click here.
So, you get to have as good as a 5G connectivity without having to wait for 5G services to be rolled out.
Image Source: TechXplore