Some believe private 5G someday might be as common as Wi-Fi is today, the reason being that millimeter wave 5G signals will not generally be able to penetrate building walls and energy-efficient glass.
“Buildings will have to create their own internal 5G networks because they won’t be able to get it from the outside network,” Arie Barendrecht, WiredScore CEO says. “Low-E glass is one of the best insulators from the 5G coverage, and if a building is over 15 stories, it gets worse.”
Barendrecht thinks that in two to three years there will be an expectation from tenants that their buildings will support 5G service and speeds.
One might suspect his forecast is too aggressive. By some estimates, Wi-Fi, which was commercially introduced in September 1999, had reached adoption of about half of U.S. homes by about 2005. The other half used Ethernet cable networks.
Also, offloading in-building access to Wi-Fi will still be possible. And the voice default might still be to 4G, which does have (compared to 5G) much better inside signal strength. And carriers will have more incentives to support VoIP as well, taking advantage of Wi-Fi offload.
The displacement of Ethernet cabled networks by Wi-Fi, in enterprises, took at least a decade.
Not until about 2010 or 2011 were there as many as one million public Wi-Fi hotspots globally. Some say public hotspots reached five million locations by 2013. Some argue that, by 2015, there were 70 million public Wi-Fi hotspots in operation.
That history suggests some circumspection about the pace at which most buildings will have private 5G networks.
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