Our world has moved to 5G. Most smartphones today are capable to support 5G connectivity. What does it exactly mean? Here G stands for generation. We are currently experiencing the 5th generation of a telecommunications system. It took 42 years to reach here. Let’s review and look at its brief history and working of mobile networks.
What is a mobile network?
A mobile network or telecommunications network is simply a system where two end nodes are connected wirelessly over a certain area of land. These end nodes are your mobile phones. To make this work, cell towers are placed over the land. Each of them is capable of providing the network over a fixed area of land. That area of land over which a single tower operates is called a cell. Hence quite often mobile network is also called a cellular network. Simply, the higher the number of cell towers in an area, and better network connectivity.
Now let’s look through the different generations of mobile networks.
1G
This remarks the very beginning of wireless telecommunication. It was first established by Japan in the year 1979 and was capable to provide a network in the city of Tokyo. The company that made this possible is nippon telegraph. Being the first revolutionary technology, it had multiple drawbacks. It was capable to provide a download speed of just 2.4kbps. Additionally when people used to voice call the quality wasn’t good. A lot of static and white noise would interfere. But one of the major drawbacks was its inability to provide an encrypted connection. This means anyone with a radio scanner could tap into your frequency and listen to your conversation. Fun fact, Russia is the only country where a 1G network is still in operation.
2G
1G was the pioneering technology, but the true revolution was brought by 2G. It resolved the voice quality issue and gave better speed. Throughout its lifetime 2 G’s average speed was 0.2 Mbps. It enabled the opportunity to send text messages [sms] and even multimedia [mms]. It truly changed the way we communicate with each other. Also, this was an encrypted network.
If you have your parents or grandparents’ old Nokia phone, then they were the first ones to use the 2G network. It was also the first to be introduced to today’s smartphone.
3G
Introduce in 2001, with the primary objective to provide users access to data from anywhere. Today we call it a roaming network. This mobile network truly unlocked the requirements of a modern smartphone phone. It was the one that enabled browsing and live video calling using apps like Skype. It had a data transfer speed of up to 2Mbps. This mobile network opened up the market for live music streaming, youtube video, sending emails through phone, etc. During that time, only two smartphone mobile companies were competing with each other, Apple and Blackberry
4G
It was first introduced in Norway back in 2009. Earlier switching from 2G to 3G simply meant to inserting a new sim card. But in the case of 4G different hardware was required in the mobile to achieve it. Even though the 4G was launched during the initial years it wasn’t capable to deliver true 4G speed. To resolve this they labeled it as 4G LTE. You might have seen this LTE on your mobile network. It stands for long-term evolution. The telecom industry promised that with the evolution in technology, the 4G speed will be indeed much higher than 3G hence they labeled it as LTE. Today you won’t see an LTE mark as we have achieved a speed from 12.5 Mbps to 55.5 Mbps since its launch. This also revolutionized the gaming industry. Due to high speed, it was now possible to play games online.
5G
And finally, we have our most recent commercially available development in mobile networks, 5G. Launched back in 2019 making South Korea the first country to implement it. Each tech works with different bandwidth. 5G provides an operational bandwidth from 30GHz to 300GHz. This means apart from mobile, more and more devices can be connected to the 5G network. This will act as a key element in revolutionizing IoT technology. If you want to know more about that click here. The speed offered by 5G is variable from country to country. Currently, all the new phones especially the ones coming under the mid-premium range come with 5G support. In India currently, Airtel is providing 5G support on your 4G sim cards.
The transition to 5G technology will take some time before it becomes ubiquitous. While this is going on, 6G is already in development and its first pilot project is scheduled to begin by 2025. But until then there is a lot more to play around with the new 5G mobile network.