Neville Rayay, Chief Technology Officer of T-Mobile Un-carrier in the US, has shared a video and the company’s vision of how things might look in 2020. This is when we expect to see quite a lot of 5G networks and with some luck we might see some real commercial deployment of a 3GPP 5G network by 2019 too.
The maximum speed of a few Gbps for mobile devices and 12 Gbps for fixed devices with latency of 2ns will enable a lot of new content. Think about 4K 360 video, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality that will need much more download and upload speeds than you can get today.
Video is showing massive possibilities in Augmented Reality applications and Fudzilla has already said that we expect to see that Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) will eventually merge in the future.
T-Mobile showcased a user scenario where a biker might use an Augmented Reality real time navigation that could even include a rear view camera. Of course, it would make biking much safer and easier warning you if you have a car behind. The real-time language translation could enable much easier communication, phasing out speech barriers. There will be an interactive mobile learning user case where a lady can get AR assistance how to fix her motorcycle. Another user case shows a runner that can get all the necessary data in AR.
T-Mobile expects people to livestream videos and concerts on their mobile devices, providing them with better experiences than anything we have today. Think, for example, about 360 degree 4K or even 8K video matched with AR or VR.
T-Mobile didn’t mention car-to-car communication in 5G, or a few other user case scenarios, but new technologies will rely on the faster speeds with lower latency. This is what 5G is all about.
The Snapdragon X50 is the world’s first 5G modem that will help carriers and un-carriers with real life trials, but we expect to see a successor of Snapdragon X50 based on the full 3GPP 5G specification as soon as the standard gets locked. This is most likely to happen in mid-2018, at the earliest.
