Japan Leaps Ahead In 5G Race

We all know the Japanese are very advanced when it comes to technology, but what they’ve just accomplished with 5G is simply stunning.

Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo and telecom company Huawei have jointly field tested 5G connectivity and have achieved a peak speed of 3.6Gbps. This is significant, especially knowing that 4G’s top speed is around 20Mbps.

“As the first in the world to succeed with such a large multi-user environment test, this is an important milestone,” said NTT DoCoMo’s Takehiro Nakamura. “This is very encouraging as the industry works to commercialise 5G by 2020… I look forward to even more impressive results when we move to the next phase of [the] field trial in Japan.”

According to a report by the Digital Spy, the tests were designed to mimic real-life conditions, with a large number of users connecting to a 5G network at once.

The testing is set to continue in 2018, during the football World Cup in Russia, and the technology is expected to be ready for public use within five years – before the end of 2020.

5G (5th generation mobile networks or 5th generation wireless systems) denotes the next major phase of mobile telecommunications standards beyond the current 4G/IMT-Advanced standards.

In addition to providing simply faster speeds, The Next Generation Mobile Networks Alliance predicts that 5G networks also will need to meet the needs of new use cases, such as the Internet of Things as well as broadcast-like services and lifeline communication in times of natural disaster.

Although updated standards that define capabilities beyond those defined in the current 4G standards are under consideration, those new capabilities are still being grouped under the current ITU-T 4G standards.