2018 was the year of 5G hype. The 5G reality is yet to come.
The entire industry has spent much of the year marketing a dazzling future to consumers, one in which the successor to 4G LTE enables entirely new technologies, such as self-driving cars and remote medicine.
.. analysts say the first 5G-capable smartphones will not even arrive on the market until next year at the earliest. And with carriers largely switching on their 5G networks in select cities at first, it will take years for 5G to become as commonplace as 4G LTE is today.
.. Verizon announced it had activated 5G service for customers in four cities. The product is not meant for use outside the home; instead, it is being offered as a stand-in for residential Internet service. Still, it is a potentially transformative offering — households with only one wired Internet provider might soon have an additional choice. But it is not “mobile data” in the way consumers tend to think of it.
.. As for when we will see the first 5G-capable smartphone? Industry analysts say the consensus appears to be the first quarter of 2019.
“I think the expectation is probably Samsung,”..
Comments:
Exactly, I see 5G as widening the gap between urban and rural populations.
.. . Verizon has almost completely stopped new Fios deployments for example (except for limited efforts in Boston) as they indicated it cost ~$800 per subscriber to install.