When it comes to 4G/LTE, we’re a fair bit behind our North American cousins, Japanese friends, Australian amigos… the list goes on.
However, thanks to a fancy new project, it sounds like the UK might well be at the front of the queue when it comes to grabbing a slice of 5G. Huzzah!
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s remember that we still don’t have bloomin’ 4G here in the UK. Well, not quite. Everything Everywhere will get the ball rolling in a few weeks (October 30).
Furthermore, it’ll be another 10 years or so before 5G hits the mainstream, so don’t go throwing any 5G-themed parties just yet.
What’s happening? Essentially, a 5G research centre is being set up at the University of Surrey, down in Englandshire. So the UK might literally be the home of 5G. Nice.
And it’s far from some low-budget fourth year undergraduate project. We’re talking £35 million, with backing from our beloved coalition, alongside South Korea’s Samsung, Spain’s Telefonica (O2’s dad), and China’s Huawei.
Professor Rahim Tafazolli tells Gigaom: "We're bringing all the major stakeholders together and we are going to decide on the advanced technologies and test them end-to-end.
"Once we are happy with the set of technologies that we have developed, in terms of performance, then we will push that particular technology towards standardisation."
Speeds on 5G are tipped to reach 10Gbps. Yikes. On the downside, it’ll be 2023 or so before the dream is realised, and we’ll all be 10 years older, with grey hair and fantastic beards. Actually, that doesn’t sound too bad.
