He believes UK residents will use 13 times more data by 2025 than they do now. Mr Dyson’s comments come as the operator EE has 9 trial sites of 5G in London. Sputnik spoke to Nigel Linge, Professor of telecommunications at the University of Salford about the rollout of 5G.
Sputnik: What are the benefits of 5G?
Nigel Linge: Well 5G will offer lots of benefits, some less obvious to the public, the most obvious is the speed of downloads and this will be a big step change on what we have now with 4G. There are lots of figures being bandied about by the industry, gigabits per second figures but I think we need a dose of reali6ty on that.
I don’t think it will be that high, but it will be considerable more than we have now. The other thing is the delay in which is currently present in all communications systems will be reduced in 5G, now that will be less obvious most people, but it’s about responsiveness, how quickly things can deliver information through a network, so a delay will be reduced.
At the moment this is the fifth generation, it seems that every 10 years, we have a completely new network launch and with 5G they are trying to get into a position where that doesn’t necessarily need to keep happening.
There are lots of things that 5G brings, some more obvious than others but it is a step change for mobile phones.
Sputnik: What do you make of the comments by 3’s Chief exec saying that people could replace home broadband with 5G?
Nigel Linge: I think that the claim that 5G will replace home broadband is potentially true in certain cases particularly in rural areas, it could be that 5G will offer a better service than some of the cabled infrastructures, but in a city centre with a big push by the industry and the government for full fibre connectivity to our homes then I think the statement that 5G will replace broadband as a sweeping statement is an over exaggeration.
I think full fibre broadband will still offer an advantage with speed over 5G.
There will be inevitable cases where 5G will be good enough for people to seriously consider whether they need both a fixed and mobile provision. So yes like a lot of this advertising at the moment, there’s a lot of hype about 5G and the reality will be different to a lot of the hype.
Sputnik: Could the UK cope with the roll out of 5G?
I think the point is that the demand is there so we have to find a way of delivering the connectivity that we need as a country. If you look how much content we are now sharing and consuming through online media, there is massive change in the way we consume and watch television, moving away from terrestrial broadcasting to mobile and fixed broadband delivery.
I don’t think we have a choice here in a sense this is a trend and we need to invest in these technologies.
Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Nigel Linge and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
