In one sense, it might be easier to envision 5G primarily as a way to supply increased bandwidth for consumer mobility, as one might see 4G as a way to increase bandwidth supply for mobile internet access demand.
Ignore for the moment the lower costs per unit 4G offered over 3G, or the similar benefits 5G will offer over 4G. Ignore for the moment the lower latency 4G offered over 3G, or the lower latency 5G will supply, compared to 4G.
Look only at 5G as a platform for supplying increased bandwidth at lower costs per bit, as was true for 4G as well. So long as there is a transparent fallback from 5G to 4G (as was true of 4G fallback to 3G), and so long as 5G experience and 4G experience are matched closely enough, then 5G can be added more gracefully than some expect.
In fact, one good reason for marketing and supplying bandwidth more incrementally when adding 5G is precisely so the 4G fallback is graceful. In my own experience, the fallback from 200 Mbps or 100 Mbps to 20 Mbps or 14 Mbps is quite graceful, per concurrent user.
In fact, unless there are some latency effects, I typically cannot tell you whether my current connection is running at 14 Mbps, 20 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 150 Mbps or some higher figure. Granted, I do not download big files very often.
My typical use cases range from web surfing to cloud-based communications to streaming video. None of those apps is overwhelmed or unpleasant if my connection is anywhere from 14 Mbps to some other three-digit rate. In other words, if I switch from a cable modem connection to mobile 4G, my experience does not suffer.
The point is that, even if I buy a 5G service with higher headline speeds, defaulting back to 4G is not going to be a problem.
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