As always, the amount of spectrum available to any mobile service provider correlates with potential data throughput. As AT&T, for example, has rolled out 5G service, it has relied on low-band assets initially.
And no amount of fancy signal processing is going to compensate for the amount of spectrum available to support 5G, compared to 4G, for example. If you look at the total amount of spectrum available to support AT&T’s 5G coverage, you can see that 4G spectrum is more capacious than 5G.
That means AT&T’s 5G network--for the moment--offers less speed than the 4G network. That will change over time, and likely quite substantially.
Over the last decade, average (or perhaps typical) mobile data speeds have grown logarithmically, according to data compiled by PCmag. I cannot tell you whether the graph shows median or mean speeds, but the point is that, assuming the same methodology is used for all data, the logarithmic trend would still hold.
There is no reason to believe 5G will fail--over time--to continue the logarithmic trend, with the release of huge amounts of new spectrum, expanded use of spectrum sharing and spectrum re-use, plus small cell access.
No comments:
Post a Comment