There’s a change in the air that could soon bring the true power of the cloud to the mobile device in your hand. Fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks, which are currently being field tested in markets around the world, promise download speeds of up to 20 Gbps.
This is many hundreds of times faster than the download speeds of the fastest mobile networks today, which use 4G Long-term Evolution to achieve up to 45 Mbps. It is also faster than what you can get with most cable broadband links.
“This means that the power of compute-based capabilities that are running on thousands of CPUs in the cloud can now be brought into the palm of our hands,” says Chief Technology Officer Sal Visca, of Elastic Path, an e-commerce software firm.
Data-heavy applications such as virtual reality or machine learning, which rely on cloud-based server muscle, will be able to run on handsets almost as quickly as they do on their servers. Data-heavy applications such as virtual reality or machine learning, which rely on cloud-based server muscle, will be able to run on handsets almost as quickly as they do on their servers. “It will be like having a supercomputer on your mobile device,” Visca says.
But not just yet. “For the normal user, the benefits of 5G mobile devices won’t be felt for around three to five years,” says Sukhi Dehal, CEO of the tech firm 383.
One of the reasons for this is that today’s mobile networks are pretty fast as it is.
Residents in London, U.K., for example, can already access mobile networks powerful enough to download Netflix movies in ultra-high definition, which is far more than you would need to be able to watch a film on a small screen.
The mobile apps we use were designed with today’s download speeds in mind, so won’t run much better when the network improves. Also, it will take time to roll out 5G.
Ashley Smatt, CEO of Maximus Networks, says: “A 5G network will require a different network from the one we have in place for 4G, which consists mostly of large masts.”
When it does arrive, the benefits will be huge.
