For about a year there has been a lot of talk about 5G, the new generation mobile networks that will have to gradually replace the current 4G, offering faster Internet connections and shorter waiting times, not only for browsing via smartphones and tablets. Equipment and devices are already available and the first trials are underway in many countries, which will lead to the diffusion of the new technology between this and next year. In the United States, the first 5G networks should be active from the second half of 2019, while for Italy it will be necessary to wait until 2020, when the networks so far privately tested by operators in some pilot cities will be open.
What is 5G?
The term 5G defines the common rules that telephone operators, transmission system producers and those of smartphones and other devices are giving and will have to respect to offer faster connections than the current ones. 5G stands for “fifth generation” and is a very generic term, which describes different technologies that vary according to the countries and the radio frequencies available for use. Something similar had happened about ten years ago, when the first trials of 4G had begun, a system that is now widespread in large cities and in most rural areas (in Italy not everywhere, also due to the complexity of the territory) . At the time, manufacturers agreed to use common standards, albeit with some differences between countries: something similar has now happened with 5G.
How can I use 5G?
At the moment no one who is not included in a trial of a 5G network can access the new system. When it is freely accessible, you will have to equip yourself with smartphones, tablets and other new generation devices, built to be compatible with the 5G signal. Some products with these characteristics will be introduced as early as this year, but the larger manufacturers will wait to be sure that the standards are established, to have more compatible products. Apple, for example, is not expected to introduce an iPhone with 5G before the second half of 2020, unless there are plans changes.
How fast is 5G going?
The new 5G networks will allow you to browse and download data much faster than the current 4G. It is estimated that at full capacity the system will be able to exceed 10 gigabits per second, although it is likely that initially an average speed will be around 1.5 gigabits. However, it is a notable improvement, considering that a 4G network is on average 20 times slower. A film can be downloaded to your smartphone or tablet in a matter of seconds, for example.
OK, what else?
The speed of downloading large amounts of data isn't the only advantage of 5G. The system has solutions other than 4G designed to reduce the “latency” as much as possible, that is the time between when we send a command and receive a response, for example while we are doing an online search. With 4G, latency varies a lot, usually ranging between 50 and 100 milliseconds; 5G should make it possible to reduce the wait to a few milliseconds, making browsing or using applications that must periodically connect to the Internet in order to function even faster.
Higher download capacity and lower latency should bring benefits in many other fields, besides those of smartphones and tablets. You will be able to use drones more easily, by sending commands quickly and obtaining almost instant reactions in the flight attitude, or you can use more compact helmets for virtual reality, connected directly to your smartphone. Manufacturers of 5G systems and mobile operators also argue that there may be advantages in numerous sectors, such as medicine, to more easily transmit data on patients, even in difficult conditions and distant from fixed access points to the Internet.
Very well, but where are we in Italy?
In 2017 the Ministry of Economic Development (MISE) launched a procedure to assign three areas in which to test the 5G in Italy: Milan with its metropolitan city (61 municipalities), Prato and L'Aquila, Bari and Matera. Based on the offers received from the operators, MISE assigned Milan to Vodafone, Prato and L'Aquila to Wind Tre / Open Fiber and Bari and Matera to TIM / Fastweb / Huawei. Each initiative involved the investment of several tens of millions of euros to install the new repeaters, update the telecommunications systems in the area and test them.
Meanwhile, the frequency auction was launched in the summer of 2018 to award licenses to mobile operators. Iliad, TIM and Vodafone obtained all three of the most important frequencies, with offers respectively of 2.407, 2.401 and 1.192 billion euros. Wind Tre obtained two with an offer of 516 million euros, while Fastweb obtained one with an offer of 32.6 million euros. In the end, the auction brought in 6.6 billion euros for the state. The frequencies in the 700 MHz band, the most important for increasing coverage, will only be available from 2022, when the television stations will have left them for the new data transmission purposes.
However, starting from 2020 the first services should be activated in Milan, Prato, L'Aquila, Matera and Bari, in addition to Rome and Turin, where other trials had already been started. However, it is not yet clear when these 5G networks can be used by individual citizens: the plans provide for a start-up with some institutional partners, who will be able, for example, to exploit the new network for environmental control, public safety and the management of transport information. The full diffusion on the national territory will probably coincide with the activation of the 700 MHz networks starting from 2022.
