How 5G internet Works
5G internet. We've been talking about it for a while and now it's finally starting to arrive. It's a revolutionary kind of internet that promises to changeeverything from your phone, to home internet, tomore futuristic fields like self-driving carsand even remote surgery, but 5G's also been in the headlines lately for a lot of bad reasons withbizarre conspiracy theories and rumors. So, to help clear things up,we're gonna explain to you, what exactly 5G is, how we got here, what the technology behindit is, and any real concerns that might exist aroundthe new technology. (chill music) So, what is 5G? Well, 5G or fifthgeneration, is the next step in mobile internet technology. It's what all of the nextwave of phones and tablets are gonna use for speedsthat are even faster than the LTE networksthat we already have. Now, our news editor andreviewer, Chris Welch, has actually been testingall these networks for awhile already, sohe can actually tell you what it's like to use these speeds today. - Okay, so all the big UScarriers are well underway with rolling out 5G, andby the end of this year,
you should be able to get itwherever you live in the US, but what 5G means on eachcarrier is different. Speeds are different,coverage is different, so for the last year I've beentesting out all the networks, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, andSprint is now part of that, just to see how fast it is and what a difference itmakes in your day to day life. So let me try and explain. Now Verizon's 5G is blazing fast; you can get download speeds ofover one gigabyte per second. That's up to 10 times faster than most home wifi connections. You can download a wholeseason of a TV show in just minutes, butthe problem is coverage. Verizon's 5G is very, very spotty. It's there on one streetand gone the next, and indoor coverage ispretty much nonexistent. That's because Verizonbases its whole 5G plan, for now, on what's called high band millimeter wave technology. You've seen it in thosecommercials as ultra wideband 5G. But the issue is, the signalcan't travel very far, so in an city where itwants to roll out 5G, Verizon's gotta put up allthese nodes all over the city, and that's not reallypractical to do nationwide, so later on this year,Verizon's also gonna turn on its low-band 5G network, but there the speedsaren't that much faster than what your LTE phone can do today. So for now, Verizon's5G network isn't really worth upgrading to a new phone for, unless you've got anode like right outside your apartment or your house. T-Mobile has the mostcomprehensive 5G plan of all the US carriers. It's also using millimeterwave on the high end, plus Sprint's midbandspectrum in the middle, and it's own low-band 5G at the base.
Now Sprint's midbandspectrum is much faster than LTE is today. I was in Texas testing their 5G network and I got speeds of 300megabytes per second. And unlike with Verizon,I could count on keeping that 5G signal wherever I went. Think of midband as the sweet spot for 5G. It's much faster than phones today, it's not quite as fast as millimeter wave, but it makes a big difference day to day. And last is AT&T whichhas a similar strategy to Verizon, in that you getthe high-band millimeter wave and low-band sub six 5G, but they're missing thatmiddle part of the cake, that midband spectrum, soyou'll have really fast speeds in small parts of some citiesand somewhat faster speeds than your phone today everywhere else. Now none of this is to beconfused with AT&T's fake 5G, which is called 5GE. You've probably seen itin your phone's status bar at times. That's just fast LTE. It's got nothing to do with real 5G that's rolling out right now.
These are still the early days of 5G. We've seen less than adozen phones hit the market that offer these new faster speeds and some of the early ones were very buggy and would overheat in the summer. Now those concerns,along with battery life, have largely been overcomewith Qualcomm's latest chips. We've seen those chips inthe Galaxy S20, the LG V60, and the OnePlus 8, allreally great phones, but we're still waiting forthat first iPhone from Apple that has 5G and that's rumored to come later on this fall in 2020. (upbeat music) - So, when we talk about 5G, we're not really talking about anything that's radicallydifferent than our current and past mobile technology.
Let's put that in perspective. The earliest generation mobiletechnology, 1G networks, were launched back in the 80s. Unlike the other generations, 1G networks used analog signals and couldreally only do voice calls. You've probably seenphones that use 1G networks like the Motorola Dynatac, thatclassic oversized cell phone from 80s movies. 2G networks kicked things up a notch. More bandwidth meant thatin addition to calls, users could start sendingdata, enabling text messages, SMS, and even pictures, MMS. Later versions of 2G phones could even access basic internet, likethe most famous 2G device ever sold, the original iPhone. 3G networks offered even more bandwidth and faster speeds, and 4G LTE, which is what most ofour current phones use, made truly fast wirelessinternet a possibility. And 5G, as Chris mentioned earlier, takes things a step beyond even that, with speeds that are fasterin some cases than home wifi. But the key thing is thatall these technologies aren't fundamentally different. They're all based on the same science, which means that it's time to talk about the electromagnetic spectrum. This is the EM spectrum, thediagram of the different types of electromagnetic radiation that exists. EM radiation is what wecall a wave of photons traveling through spaceand all EM radiation, be it AM radio waves, X-rays, infrared, or even visible light fall somewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum.
The difference betweenharmful X-ray radiation and benign AM radio, is simplythe amount of energy it has. Now, on the right end of the spectrum are low energy radio and microwaves, which are characterized by low frequency and long wave lengths. As we travel up the spectrum,wave lengths get smaller, frequencies get higher,and the amount of energy being transmitted gets higher too. AM radio, for example, broadcasts between 540 and 1600 kilohertz. It's low energy, butthose low wave lengths can travel incrediblyfar, up to 100 miles. And depending on atmospheric conditions, they can potentially span the globe by bouncing off the atmosphere. But again, quality suffers. - [Announcer] We hear soundoriginating at that very moment, hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. - Go up the spectrum though, to FM radio which broadcasts at between88 and 108 megahertz, and you've got more bandwidth, which allows for higherquality broadcasts, but your usable range decreases. It's the same basicidea with cellular data.
New generations allow us to improve our transmission technology, which leads to increasedbandwidth and higher frequencies, which in turn leads to faster speeds. But at the core, it's allthe same basic technology and the different types of 5G, actually illustrate this really well. For example, take AT&T andT-Mobile's low-band networks which Chris referred to. They're in the 600 megahertzand 850 megahertz bands, effectively the same area of spectrum as existing LTE, but thefact that they're new bands of spectrum that aren't already clogged up with existing customers,combined with new transmission technologies, means thatthese low-band 5G networks can offer faster speeds than LTE, even though they're basically using the same spectrum bands as LTE. And that low-band nature, alsomeans that they can transmit over a much wider rangethan other types of 5G. It's why T-Mobile, for example, can claim to have nationwide 5G coverage, while Verizon is stuck tojust a few street corners.
Next is midband 5G, whichis basically just used by Sprint and now T-Mobile,which owns Sprint. Located at the 2.5 gigahertzrange of the spectrum, it offers faster speeds than low-band 5G, but it has more limited range. For comparison, 2.5 gigahertzis about the same area of the electromagneticspectrum as your home wifi. Now midband is middle of theroad in almost every respect. It's higher frequency and more bandwidth than low-band 5G, but it'snot gonna be quite the speeds and frequency that you'llget from millimeter wave, which is the ultra fast 5G. Now these are located around 30 gigahertz, much higher frequencythan any other types of 5G and they offer blazing fast speeds; the ones Chris mentionedearlier from Verizon and in limited areas, T-Mobile, and AT&T, but those radio wavesare also really small, between one and 10millimeters, hence the name, which are actually really badat passing through objects like walls or buildings,which means that the range is incredibly limited.
So even though it offersthe fastest 5G speeds, it's also the 5G that you'll probably end up using the least, because that rollout, it'sjust gonna be really small. But those increases in bandwidthare only part of the story. A lot of the improvements in 5G, come from new transmission technology. Things like carrier aggregation, which combine multiple LTE bands into one data stream for faster speeds, or MIMO antennas, or multipleinput multiple output, where we use antennaarrays, made up of lots of little antennas toimprove connectivity. (chill music) But is 5G, or really anycellular radiation, safe? Well, there've been a lot of inaccuracies going around about 5G. Some are completely absurd,like the idea that 5G somehow caused the coronavirus, but the simple answer isthat 5G is basically the same as any other type ofcellular radio technology and we already have a pretty good idea that cellular radiation is not harmful. - Of course people are concerned a little about possible effects ofthe formation of cancer if you use your mobile phone a lot or if you've been exposedcontinuously to radiation from cell towers.
There's a lot of studies available on that sort of effect, butthat's never been proven that indeed there is a carcinogenic effect of expose to radio frequency radiation. There's also concern that exposure to radio frequency fields, forinstance the higher fields, the higher frequenciesthat 5G's got to use, that that may result in adverse affect on the immune system,and that people may be more susceptible for the, for infection by the COVID-19 virus. There's no proof, no indication whatsoever that there's any effectson the immune system from expose to radio frequency fields. - Now, I know thatcellular radiation falls into the non-ionizingportion of the spectrum. Can you talk a littlemore about the differences between non-ionizingand ionizing radiation? - Ionizing radiation hasa very high energy content and because of that, it is possible that if you are exposed tothat sort of radiation, that chemical bonds in the body, that they are damaged and broken, and that may result inuncontrolled cell growth, which may result in theformation of cancer. This sort of effect,breakage of chemical bonds, is something that is not possible with non-ionizing radiation,with the type of radiation that cellular technology uses, because the energy contentof that type of radiation is not enough to resultin such chemical breakage. The entire spectrum ofnon-ionizing radiation, up to UV radiation, is somethingthat has no energy content that is high enough tobreak chemical bonds. Heating is the onlyproven effect of exposure to radio frequency radiation.
While 5G doesn't pose any health risks, there are gonna be practical issues with the transition to 5G. Some of the growingpains are just switching to a new generation of technology. Things like more expensive plans. That faster data speedmeans that you can burn through your data cap really quickly, and that's something thatwe're gonna have to figure out. The first wave of 5Gphones were more expensive, although prices are starting to come down. And of course, there's justbuilding out the networks. The low range of midband andmillimeter wave networks, means that it'll take longer and cost more to build more towers, toget that kind of coverage that people expect. The good news is, is thatwe've already started. Qualcomm, for example,has made 5G the default in all of of its newchips and flagship phones in 2020, from companieslike Samsung,
Apple, OnePlus, are eitheralready shipping with 5G, or expected to have itby the end of the year. And that's to say nothingof the big advances that carriers likeVerizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T have made in buildingout the actual networks. And more importantly, none of these issues are really new. The transition from 2Gto 3G, or from 3G to LTE, saw similar problems and the tech industry was able to solve them. The only difference is thatwe're a lot more reliant on our phones than wewere 10 to 15 years ago, and that's why these issuesseem so much more important now. But the key thing to remember is that 5G and the technologies aroundit, aren't really new. It's just our perspective on them, and our reliance on ourphones that's really changed. Thanks so much for watching. We've been really working ona 5G explainer for a while, so we're really glad tohave put this together. If you have any other questions about 5G or technology in general, let us know.
you should be able to get itwherever you live in the US, but what 5G means on eachcarrier is different. Speeds are different,coverage is different, so for the last year I've beentesting out all the networks, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, andSprint is now part of that, just to see how fast it is and what a difference itmakes in your day to day life. So let me try and explain. Now Verizon's 5G is blazing fast; you can get download speeds ofover one gigabyte per second. That's up to 10 times faster than most home wifi connections. You can download a wholeseason of a TV show in just minutes, butthe problem is coverage. Verizon's 5G is very, very spotty. It's there on one streetand gone the next, and indoor coverage ispretty much nonexistent. That's because Verizonbases its whole 5G plan, for now, on what's called high band millimeter wave technology. You've seen it in thosecommercials as ultra wideband 5G. But the issue is, the signalcan't travel very far, so in an city where itwants to roll out 5G, Verizon's gotta put up allthese nodes all over the city, and that's not reallypractical to do nationwide, so later on this year,Verizon's also gonna turn on its low-band 5G network, but there the speedsaren't that much faster than what your LTE phone can do today. So for now, Verizon's5G network isn't really worth upgrading to a new phone for, unless you've got anode like right outside your apartment or your house. T-Mobile has the mostcomprehensive 5G plan of all the US carriers. It's also using millimeterwave on the high end, plus Sprint's midbandspectrum in the middle, and it's own low-band 5G at the base.
Now Sprint's midbandspectrum is much faster than LTE is today. I was in Texas testing their 5G network and I got speeds of 300megabytes per second. And unlike with Verizon,I could count on keeping that 5G signal wherever I went. Think of midband as the sweet spot for 5G. It's much faster than phones today, it's not quite as fast as millimeter wave, but it makes a big difference day to day. And last is AT&T whichhas a similar strategy to Verizon, in that you getthe high-band millimeter wave and low-band sub six 5G, but they're missing thatmiddle part of the cake, that midband spectrum, soyou'll have really fast speeds in small parts of some citiesand somewhat faster speeds than your phone today everywhere else. Now none of this is to beconfused with AT&T's fake 5G, which is called 5GE. You've probably seen itin your phone's status bar at times. That's just fast LTE. It's got nothing to do with real 5G that's rolling out right now.
These are still the early days of 5G. We've seen less than adozen phones hit the market that offer these new faster speeds and some of the early ones were very buggy and would overheat in the summer. Now those concerns,along with battery life, have largely been overcomewith Qualcomm's latest chips. We've seen those chips inthe Galaxy S20, the LG V60, and the OnePlus 8, allreally great phones, but we're still waiting forthat first iPhone from Apple that has 5G and that's rumored to come later on this fall in 2020. (upbeat music) - So, when we talk about 5G, we're not really talking about anything that's radicallydifferent than our current and past mobile technology.
Let's put that in perspective. The earliest generation mobiletechnology, 1G networks, were launched back in the 80s. Unlike the other generations, 1G networks used analog signals and couldreally only do voice calls. You've probably seenphones that use 1G networks like the Motorola Dynatac, thatclassic oversized cell phone from 80s movies. 2G networks kicked things up a notch. More bandwidth meant thatin addition to calls, users could start sendingdata, enabling text messages, SMS, and even pictures, MMS. Later versions of 2G phones could even access basic internet, likethe most famous 2G device ever sold, the original iPhone. 3G networks offered even more bandwidth and faster speeds, and 4G LTE, which is what most ofour current phones use, made truly fast wirelessinternet a possibility. And 5G, as Chris mentioned earlier, takes things a step beyond even that, with speeds that are fasterin some cases than home wifi. But the key thing is thatall these technologies aren't fundamentally different. They're all based on the same science, which means that it's time to talk about the electromagnetic spectrum. This is the EM spectrum, thediagram of the different types of electromagnetic radiation that exists. EM radiation is what wecall a wave of photons traveling through spaceand all EM radiation, be it AM radio waves, X-rays, infrared, or even visible light fall somewhere on the electromagnetic spectrum.
The difference betweenharmful X-ray radiation and benign AM radio, is simplythe amount of energy it has. Now, on the right end of the spectrum are low energy radio and microwaves, which are characterized by low frequency and long wave lengths. As we travel up the spectrum,wave lengths get smaller, frequencies get higher,and the amount of energy being transmitted gets higher too. AM radio, for example, broadcasts between 540 and 1600 kilohertz. It's low energy, butthose low wave lengths can travel incrediblyfar, up to 100 miles. And depending on atmospheric conditions, they can potentially span the globe by bouncing off the atmosphere. But again, quality suffers. - [Announcer] We hear soundoriginating at that very moment, hundreds, or even thousands of miles away. - Go up the spectrum though, to FM radio which broadcasts at between88 and 108 megahertz, and you've got more bandwidth, which allows for higherquality broadcasts, but your usable range decreases. It's the same basicidea with cellular data.
New generations allow us to improve our transmission technology, which leads to increasedbandwidth and higher frequencies, which in turn leads to faster speeds. But at the core, it's allthe same basic technology and the different types of 5G, actually illustrate this really well. For example, take AT&T andT-Mobile's low-band networks which Chris referred to. They're in the 600 megahertzand 850 megahertz bands, effectively the same area of spectrum as existing LTE, but thefact that they're new bands of spectrum that aren't already clogged up with existing customers,combined with new transmission technologies, means thatthese low-band 5G networks can offer faster speeds than LTE, even though they're basically using the same spectrum bands as LTE. And that low-band nature, alsomeans that they can transmit over a much wider rangethan other types of 5G. It's why T-Mobile, for example, can claim to have nationwide 5G coverage, while Verizon is stuck tojust a few street corners.
Next is midband 5G, whichis basically just used by Sprint and now T-Mobile,which owns Sprint. Located at the 2.5 gigahertzrange of the spectrum, it offers faster speeds than low-band 5G, but it has more limited range. For comparison, 2.5 gigahertzis about the same area of the electromagneticspectrum as your home wifi. Now midband is middle of theroad in almost every respect. It's higher frequency and more bandwidth than low-band 5G, but it'snot gonna be quite the speeds and frequency that you'llget from millimeter wave, which is the ultra fast 5G. Now these are located around 30 gigahertz, much higher frequencythan any other types of 5G and they offer blazing fast speeds; the ones Chris mentionedearlier from Verizon and in limited areas, T-Mobile, and AT&T, but those radio wavesare also really small, between one and 10millimeters, hence the name, which are actually really badat passing through objects like walls or buildings,which means that the range is incredibly limited.
So even though it offersthe fastest 5G speeds, it's also the 5G that you'll probably end up using the least, because that rollout, it'sjust gonna be really small. But those increases in bandwidthare only part of the story. A lot of the improvements in 5G, come from new transmission technology. Things like carrier aggregation, which combine multiple LTE bands into one data stream for faster speeds, or MIMO antennas, or multipleinput multiple output, where we use antennaarrays, made up of lots of little antennas toimprove connectivity. (chill music) But is 5G, or really anycellular radiation, safe? Well, there've been a lot of inaccuracies going around about 5G. Some are completely absurd,like the idea that 5G somehow caused the coronavirus, but the simple answer isthat 5G is basically the same as any other type ofcellular radio technology and we already have a pretty good idea that cellular radiation is not harmful. - Of course people are concerned a little about possible effects ofthe formation of cancer if you use your mobile phone a lot or if you've been exposedcontinuously to radiation from cell towers.
There's a lot of studies available on that sort of effect, butthat's never been proven that indeed there is a carcinogenic effect of expose to radio frequency radiation. There's also concern that exposure to radio frequency fields, forinstance the higher fields, the higher frequenciesthat 5G's got to use, that that may result in adverse affect on the immune system,and that people may be more susceptible for the, for infection by the COVID-19 virus. There's no proof, no indication whatsoever that there's any effectson the immune system from expose to radio frequency fields. - Now, I know thatcellular radiation falls into the non-ionizingportion of the spectrum. Can you talk a littlemore about the differences between non-ionizingand ionizing radiation? - Ionizing radiation hasa very high energy content and because of that, it is possible that if you are exposed tothat sort of radiation, that chemical bonds in the body, that they are damaged and broken, and that may result inuncontrolled cell growth, which may result in theformation of cancer. This sort of effect,breakage of chemical bonds, is something that is not possible with non-ionizing radiation,with the type of radiation that cellular technology uses, because the energy contentof that type of radiation is not enough to resultin such chemical breakage. The entire spectrum ofnon-ionizing radiation, up to UV radiation, is somethingthat has no energy content that is high enough tobreak chemical bonds. Heating is the onlyproven effect of exposure to radio frequency radiation.
While 5G doesn't pose any health risks, there are gonna be practical issues with the transition to 5G. Some of the growingpains are just switching to a new generation of technology. Things like more expensive plans. That faster data speedmeans that you can burn through your data cap really quickly, and that's something thatwe're gonna have to figure out. The first wave of 5Gphones were more expensive, although prices are starting to come down. And of course, there's justbuilding out the networks. The low range of midband andmillimeter wave networks, means that it'll take longer and cost more to build more towers, toget that kind of coverage that people expect. The good news is, is thatwe've already started. Qualcomm, for example,has made 5G the default in all of of its newchips and flagship phones in 2020, from companieslike Samsung,
Apple, OnePlus, are eitheralready shipping with 5G, or expected to have itby the end of the year. And that's to say nothingof the big advances that carriers likeVerizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T have made in buildingout the actual networks. And more importantly, none of these issues are really new. The transition from 2Gto 3G, or from 3G to LTE, saw similar problems and the tech industry was able to solve them. The only difference is thatwe're a lot more reliant on our phones than wewere 10 to 15 years ago, and that's why these issuesseem so much more important now. But the key thing to remember is that 5G and the technologies aroundit, aren't really new. It's just our perspective on them, and our reliance on ourphones that's really changed. Thanks so much for watching. We've been really working ona 5G explainer for a while, so we're really glad tohave put this together. If you have any other questions about 5G or technology in general, let us know.
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