If 4G network speeds just aren’t doing it for you, 5G is coming -- but not for another seven years. A new report from ABI research says that the best analyst estimates suggest that 5G won’t roll out until 2020.
A major reason why we won’t be seeing 5G anytime soon is that it hasn’t been certified for use in phones. ABI points out that standardization bodies such as the 3GPP and the International Telecommunications Union haven’t ratified such technologies yet.
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However, that hasn’t stopped carriers and smartphone manufacturers from advertising the technology today. Earlier this month Japanese carrier NTT Docomo announced that it plans to launch its 5G network by 2020, claiming to support transfer speeds up to 100 times faster than current rates. Samsung has also said in the past that it plans to bring a 5G network to market by 2020, boasting that it has managed to transmit data at a speed of 1 Gbps via 5G.
While tech industry players continue to ready their 5G networks seven years in advance, improvements to 4G such as AWS LTE are beginning to surface. Earlier this year rumors suggested that Verizon would begin to deploy its recently acquired AWS LTE spectrum before the end of 2014.
Reports from this week have suggested that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 has reached up to 80Mbps on Verizon’s network in certain areas of New York City, sparking suspicion that AWS is already underway.
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