5G Internet Is A Thousand Times Faster Than 4G

People in South Korea will be able to download entire movies in just one second by 2020. The country’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) announced that it would be investing $1.5 billion (1.6 trillion won) to develop 5G technology that will be 1,000 times faster than the current 4G technology.

MEST hopes to have a trial 5G service ready by 2017 and make the technology commercially available by 2020. The ministry also aims on developing new features alongside the network itself, including Ultra-HD streaming, hologram transmission and upgraded social networking services. The government estimates that the projected sales for relevant industries using the 5G infrastructure between 2020 and 2026 will be $310 billion (331 trillion won). MEST hopes to develop the technology with the help of service providers such as SK Telecom and Korea Telecom, as well as the help of tech giants such as Samsung and LG.

Samsung has already announced that it is currently working on developing 5G technology. They claim that they have already been successful in transmitting a 1.056 GB per second signal up to 2 kilometers. The company also hopes to make this technology commercially available by 2020. The tests held by Samsung used 64 antennas to transmit the high frequency signal by alternating between the antennas that were more easily available to the signal than the others. The results put forward by Samsung have been met with criticism and many claim that it is only a marketing stunt.

Whatever the truth may be, development of a new network is being looked into by other countries as well. The EU is set on developing a next-generation network and hope to meet the increase in traffic by 2020. The speeds claimed by 5G may or may not be speculation, but a new breed of network is sure to come in a few years.