Winter Olympics 5G isn't real 5G, says Qualcomm, that won't land until 2019

Qualcomm has fleshed out the details of what's going to land in the hands of the 18 carriers who last week signed on for “standards-compliant” 5G trials. The company last week said the 18 carriers will soon start to field-test its Snapdragon X50 modem, and it's working hard to corner the OEM business as well, with Asus, two …

[Knoydart]

Re: Never do this

Minor point - NR means new radio, not next radio as mentioned in the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately...

...high speed data access for me means “accidentally open a YouTube video and eat a month’s data allowance in a couple of seconds”

The irony is that other than that, the cheapest option is fine for me.

[FrankAlphaXII]

Well hell, LTE isn't true 4G, it's Marketing 4G unless it's LTE Advanced. So why would 5G be any different?

[Steve Davies 3]

Interesting

And there were plenty of cough-cough comentators in the media slagging off Apple for not having 5G functionality in the ultra expensive iPhone X.

I had reservations about those comments simply because there was nowhere to use 5G and Apple being Apple won't include anything that would make them 1st to implement something.

Now we get Quallcomm (not a great fan of Apple at the moment) telling us that it won't be until 2019 that we can get the chips to support it.

I know that it is cold outside but I have to wonder if hell is actually freezing over?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Interesting

They weren't complaining about the iPhone X not having 5G, but that it doesn't have the fastest possible LTE. It can hit "only" 600 Mbps, versus 1.2 Gbps for the fastest (currently shipping) Qualcomm chip.

The hilarious thing is that there is no difference between the two. The fastest any version of LTE can go with a single channel is 150 Mbps. All faster varieties use multiple channels and/or multiple MIMO streams. The iPhone X has exactly the same spectral efficiency as devices using "faster" LTE chips - both are using QAM256. In a busy cell there are too many devices for any single device to grab multiple channels or make use of MIMO, so both phones would be limited to 150 Mbps.

In a nearly idle tower sure the 1.2 Gbps capable device will go faster, but someone please tell me how your mobile experience is improved by downloading at 1.2 Gbps instead of 600 Mbps? Or for that matter 150 Mbps instead of 600 Mbps.

[4whatitsworth]

Snooze

Wake me in 2020 when theres decent hardware and enough decent coverage to make it even remotely worth looking at. Then and only then if the providers can come up with a data package that isnt quite frankly utterly ridiculous.