A promising but complex technology
The aim of ultra-high-speed 5G mobile is to concurrently respond, via a unified technology, to a very wide variety of needs, the respective requirements of which in terms of speed, latency, coverage and energy efficiency could prove mutually-exclusive: the connected car, industrial automation, IoT, remote surgery… It will be made of new technological building blocks (radio interface, network architecture) currently being optimized or designed. The latest specifications, which will be determined by releases 16 and 17 of the 3GPP standards agency, are expected in June 2020 and September 2021. 5G will also rely on new frequency bands (3.5 GHz, 1.5 GHz and 26 GHz). Its arrival will be gradual, as the technology is not mature and the 26 GHz frequencies will not be allocated until 2022.