The 5G Revolution: A Complete Guide to the Next Level of Connectivity

Just think of the entire HD movie downloading in seconds, high-stake games playing without even a single lag, or augmented reality in applications. In essence, this is 5G—the fifth generation of wireless technology—about to change the digital landscape, turning life into dimensions no man ever thought of.

This is the next level of mobile connectivity we all need. With this high end technology, we are getting the chance of experiencing not only a speedier internet but also bringing disruptive changes to our lives and more. To explore more cutting-edge technology and updates, visit reminiapkking.

But good innovation leads to myriads of questions as well. What is 5G, after all? What differentiates it from 4G? And what might be the potential gains and challenges? This ultimate guide on 5G seeks to demystify it by offering a clear view of what 5G is, how it works, the technology within, and the far-reaching consequences. 

Whether or not you are a tech geek dying to learn about the next big thing, or a person simply fascinated by the way technology models our future, this article will cater to all your veils of knowledge related to 5G. Read till the end, so you don’t have to search anymore on 5G related questions.

5G is the 5th generation technology standard for cellular mobiles that promises to provide connections to current mobile versions that are exponentially faster than previous cellular technologies. 

For an Average, the download speeds of 5G is around 1Gbps that makes it the new standard for next-generation networks.Hence, these networks will double the rate of the growth and evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), due to the underlying infrastructure that will be able to sustain the large amounts of data, making the globalized world more intelligent and connected. 

For a glimpse of it, just think about a stream of data being sent in real time from millions of sensors, giving different operators an up-to-the-minute status of everything, from your home to your neighborhood and even your whole city. 

Developers started deploying it in 2019. 5G has already rolled out worldwide, with providers starting to create new nodes in locations and cities in the US, the UK, Australia, and other countries. Although many rollouts have been delayed due to the ongoing pandemic, broadband infrastructure deployment continues to move forward, and the vast majority of carriers continue to tie together improvements in 4G and 5G expansions with the creation of new nodes in more and more locations and cities. 

Most of these new 5G deployments are combining existing 3G and 4G infrastructures with the newer technology to produce faster, more reliable connections for consumers no matter where they are.

Over the last year, 5G has been rolling out to more and more countries. The outcome is that ultra-fast connectivity to most regions has, at this time, become a reality. The availability of this high end technology remains hit or miss, depending on your location. Let’s look more closely at the current 5G landscape in the US, UK, and Australia:

Important Considerations

It is not the case that you get 5G connectivity right away. You can face disruptions even with a 5G-ready phone and a 5G-supporting plan. Consider the following things as well along them:

Network Availability: Ask your carrier whether 5G is available at your particular location. Most of the times they offer coverage maps and updates.

Device Compatibility: Make sure your device is compatible with the exact bands and frequencies that your carrier will be using for 5G.

Plan Requirements: Some carriers require specific plans for access to 5G, so make sure your current plan has 5G.

But as the technology matures and the networks become wider, 5G coverage will become pervasive, and faster speeds will reach more reliable connections across a wider audience. You have to stay tuned with your service provider for an update on new areas being covered and improvements in service quality.

There are four major wireless carriers in U.S. and all of them now offer 5G, but finding a connection can still be a bit tricky. Service providers continue to ramp up their coverage monthly, though, as they build their networks out progressively.

The company had a very high profile when it turned on its 5G Home network in late 2018 and then followed that by its 5G mobile network in April 2019—both world firsts for next-generation 5G.

As of the end of 2019, 5G from Verizon was in parts of 31 cities, ranging from Chicago and Los Angeles to New York City, Atlanta, and Dallas, and on to smaller cities such as Memphis, Columbus, and Grand Rapids.

By June 2020, the company now offers 5G services in 35 cities, including recent additions like Little Rock, AR, Kansas City, MO, and Cincinnati, OH, with San Diego, as of May. The company expects to go far further in the year, albeit the occurrences caused by the pandemic.

And in Chicago, people were getting download speeds of up to 1.4Gbps—a huge improvement compared to 300Mbps, the theoretical top speed of 4G (average 4G speeds, however, hover around <100Mbps). However, this makes the Verizon 5G coverage quite patchy because ultra-high speeds are limited to a low area through its use of mmWave technology, specifically in the 28Ghz and 39Ghz spectrums. This means, for now, 5G is available only in neighborhoods and some parts of towns.

Well, patchiness was something residents bore witness to firsthand, whereby they had to often traverse in the city to hit peak speeds, but always managed to hit speeds of around the 1Gbps mark. These speeds and coverage areas will only improve over time. Have a look at the coverage maps for your area from Verizon.

In 2024, Verizon will remain in a leadership position in the front line of 5G, with more emphasis on ultra-wideband 5G. High-frequency millimeter wave technology provides blazing fast speed and low latency, which is ideal for very dense urban areas and innovative applications like AR and AV. That’s the deal. 

Verizon has extended the reach of 5G into the vast expanses of rural and suburban areas using its nationwide low-band spectrum to further the reach. Emphasis on network reliability and advanced solutions within the 5G network has ranked Verizon as not only the top name with both consumers and enterprises but also the driver for device and service adoption in the 5G-enabled world.

If we talk about T-Mobile journey of 5G then it went down a different path altogether, particularly during its 2019 talks to merge with Sprint. While T-Mobile does use some 28Ghz mmWave frequencies, it also includes sub-600Mhz frequencies that cover broader areas, reaching suburban and rural community with lower speeds.

T-Mobile launched its mmWave coverage in New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Las Vegas in June of this year, with only the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G being available at the time. The company intended to cover 30 cities by the end of this year.

In December 2019, T-Mobile made a massive nationwide 5G roll-out using the lower-600Mhz frequencies and reportedly touched 1 million square miles, reaching 60% of Americans. Along with that, June of 2020 brought the 5G lineup for T-Mobile with all three flavours of the Samsung Galaxy S20: S20, S20 Plus, S20 Ultra, the LG V60 ThinQ and the OnePlus 8 5G.

T-Mobile sustained the expansion in 2020, adding Anchorage, Alaska, in June, by partnering with western regional carrier GCI to bring 5G access there. The merger with Sprint ensured that T-Mobile made a roll-out of 5G across the entire nation, even though the speeds and covering are not equal.

In 2024, the brand has been able to fully capitalize on its mid-band 5G network as a direct product from the Sprint merger and has made extensive and reliable coverage throughout the U.S. While, with the “layer cake” strategy between low-band, mid-band, and millimeter wave, T-Mobile can strike a good deal between speed and coverage, together with the capacity. 

The player has greatly boosted the connectivity of the rural areas with effectively bridging the digital divide courtesy of their expansive 5G network. The company, because of its innovation and the delivery of services to the customers, is in extensive work in competition with other companies to bring about further progress in 5G technology for competitive packages for individual consumers and enterprises.

Sprint decided to use the balanced spread of frequencies in deploying 5G by leveraging 2.5 GHz as a mid-band frequency. This was to add onto the already existing high and low band frequencies of T-Mobile into a very strong and complete 5G network.

That changed in large cities as of May 2019, when Sprint started to light up its 5G network, connecting Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City, among nine cities. It extended its availability to New York City, Washington D.C., Phoenix, and Los Angeles that summer. Then, Houston was added to the list, with more to be expected to be added very soon.

Sprint itself has an impressive lineup of 5G devices, from the Samsung Galaxy S20 5G series to the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, as well as the LG V50 ThinQ—along with the US-only model of the OnePlus 7T 5G, plus an HTC 5G Hub for mobile 5G hotspots.

After the formal approval of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger in February 2020, customers of Sprint have been onwardly connected to T-Mobile’s 5G network starting from April 2020. It was to be fully integrated within the New T-Mobile, together with a single brand. It remains unclear today exactly when the full integration took place, but at least so far, Sprint customers enjoyed the benefits of this larger network.

The completion of the Sprint and T-Mobile merger in 2024 has conjoined both the physical services and the overall branding of the two into the T-Mobile name. It has been of immense value to the network, which comes with better coverage and reliability in the country for its customers.

AT&T had been among the laziest in adopting 5G investments. Launched in late 2018, AT&T is now in its ninth month with its 5G offering, this time stretching to another seven cities: Austin, Los Angeles, Orlando, and San Francisco. However, all this while, AT&T has not offered a 5G-capable phone and has only employed the 5G Netgear Nighthawk mobile hotspot for customer connectivity.

AT&T was always going to be an easy target for criticism, having stuck an obvious brand like “5Ge” or 5G Evolution on what was essentially a 4G LTE network with minor improvements based on the 5G technologies.

Although the launch was quite lackluster, AT&T significantly improved its 5G footprint. The network has true 5G backing and has come up with numerous compatible devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S20 series and LG V60 ThinQ. At this moment, the AT&T 5G service is available in 190 markets across the United States. AT&T customers can visit the AT&T website for the latest coverage details to verify its availability at their address.

By 2024, AT&T gradually accelerated the pace of building out its 5G footprint, approaching its competitors. These leaves the carrier with widespread 5G availability, delivering faster and more reliable service for millions of customers across the country.

In UK, similar kind of 5G expansion happened in 2019. The major carriers started providing its services and the details are given below:

On May 30, EE became the first UK carrier to launch its 5G network, turning it on in six cities. By the end of that year, it had grown to 50 towns and cities between London and Edinburgh, encompassing Birmingham, Belfast, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, and Wolverhampton. The picture by October 2020 shows the coverage to be in a total of 112 towns and cities. But like the US networks, EE’s 5G was available in some but not all UK cities. Though it promised speeds of up to 1Gbps, users experienced about a third or at most half the “advertised” bandwidth. EE currently has the 12 very newest 5G models, from affordable offerings like the Oppo Reno 5G and Samsung Galaxy A90 designs to flagships including the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Fold.

So in brief, EE has been leading the 5G scoreboard with over 200 towns and cities across the UK by 2024. This has been improved with better in-city distribution, which is many urban areas providing a more robust high-speed connection in most places. Now EE has an even bigger range of 5G phones — that also includes the latest handsets from Apple and Samsung. Speed has also been improved; both the average and median users are now getting closer to that 1Gbps figure promised.

This company opened up its 5G service to their targetted audience on July 3, 2019 that started coverage in seven major cities before expanding it to other eight towns and cities a fortnight later. These eight towns belonged to 31 separate towns and cities on the list. Vodafone had launched its 5G in 54 places by the end of October 2020. Crucially, Vodafone provided 5G roaming in many of the key global destinations where other major UK networks did not. The 5G lineup included seven models of smartphones: Samsung Galaxy S20 5G, S20 Plus 5G, Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G, Samsung Galaxy A90 5G, OnePlus 7 Pro, and Huawei Mate X.

In 2024, you can easily find the their 5G network in more than 150 places throughout UK. Along with that their different 5G roaming deals are available at reasonable prices, making it easy to get fast internet while you’re in countries that support the tech. Vodafone carries a wide selection of 5G devices from the most important manufacturers, some that only they sell, and has been improving its average speeds to levels in many areas which are comfortably over 500 Mbps.

After Three first launched 5G in the United Kingdom on August 19th, 2019, it came as no surprise. The mobile 5G commercial launch was scheduled to come sometime in late 2019, as the carrier also rolled out its home broadband services at the beginning. That network had 5G in just 68 markets as of October 2020, coming after Three spent two years bringing up the offering after getting a super-late start on the tech. 5G was standard on all of its plans and got a good variety of 5G devices as well.

Three’s 5G network reached over 130 locations in the UK by late 2024. While all its plans include free 5G, Three offers an even better value to the customer. It is heavily investing back into its network to enable more reliable and far-reaching, as well as faster 5G connectivity. Three handsets are robust and include a few budget options, with new 5G smartphones from top manufacturers in that category.

O2 launched 5G commercially in October 2019, starting with six cities: London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Leeds, and Slough. The carrier that year said it would bring 5G service to 14 additional cities by the end of this year, including Bristol, Derby, Eton, Leicester, Nottingham, and Windsor. In October 2020, O2 5G had reach for over seventy-five places around the state. The established 5G devices in its inventory totaled twelve models including Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 Plus, S10, and A90 variants, Xiaomi’s Mi Mix slides phone, the Mate 20 X from Huawei, and Oppo Reno.

By now its O2 5G network expanded over 2024 in more than 160 locations. The carrier concentrated on boosting its in-city coverage and offering better 5G service for those who live in both urban and rural areas. O2 has also expanded its 5G device lineup and now offers a broad range of 5G devices from top-end to mid-tier handsets. In the meantime, average speeds also grew with many users seeing more near to 1 gigabit per second.

Sky Mobile 5G finally went live at the beginning of 2020, a few months after it had originally planned for in November 2019. This utilizes O2 infrastructure for the coverage. Sustainable switch-on: Tesco Mobile made sure to catch up with O2’s coverage (Image credit: Future). VOXI launched on 5G in October 2019 where it uses Vodafone infrastructure for its own service. BT thrust itself into the 5G mix in October, using EE’s network as the base. The 5G smartphones available from BT include the Samsung Galaxy S20 range, Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G, and OnePlus Pro McLaren.

The year 2024 had been hyped to the hilt as their 5G plans came into play. Most recently Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile continue to enjoy wide-ranging 5G with O2’s 5G coverage as such. And these days, VOXI is widely available nationwide on the Vodafone network too. The case is the same today, with BT offering ubiquitous 5G coverage around the UK underpinned by EE’s network. These are networks that now have a variety of 5G devices, with packages that compete both on entry cost and monthly pricing — the kind offering through which 5G will become democratized across mainstream users. They also now have much faster 5G connections and work better overall.

Likewise, in Australia too 5G network and devices followed the trend of innovation and carriers started offering its services there as well. Belo are the details of it.

Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone, the OG Telco Networks all have confirmed to start their 5G networks in Australia in this year. Telstra and Optus are first to market, with Vodafone following closely after its delayed launch. Australia has some of the fastest 5G speeds worldwide—our median download speed is almost three times faster than the global average at over 280Mbps.

Telstra and Optus are competing hard, each saying they provide the fastest 5G speeds. Telstra edge Optus in the 5G mobile service race. The speeds of both have been fine, and while no better than one another—which is hardly surprising as they share the same spectrum holdings—network coverage sees Telstra ahead here; it has a greater national footprint within available markets, meaning a larger percentage of its user base will use 5G compared to that at Optus. Both telcos’ 5G pages have detailed and current maps of their coverage, which is rapidly expanding.

In 2024, Australia still leads the way in 5G speed and coverage. That leaves Telstra on top but Optus very much snapping at its heels. Vodafone has also made big strides in connecting more Australians to speeds as high (VHA/TPG) as 250Mbps, at least for now, building improved infrastructure that delivers even faster peak download speeds approaching 500Mbps in select urban areas.

Current models include:

• LG V50 ThinQ 5G
• Oppo Reno 5G
• Samsung Galaxy S20 5G, S20 Plus 5G, S20 Ultra 5G
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G
• Samsung Galaxy S10 5G
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G

Along with that now Google announced its support for newer models, such as the Nokia 8.3 5G, Huawei P40 Pro, Huawei P40, Sony Xperia 1 II, and Xiaomi Mi range.

**2024 Update**: There are now loads of 5G phones. Popular models include:

• Samsung Galaxy S24 series
• iPhone 15 and 16 series
• Google Pixel 8 and 9
• Sony Xperia 5 V
• Oppo Find X6
• Xiaomi Mi 12

With these newer models, Apple has upgraded battery life, added new camera systems, while also squeezing in more efficient 5G modems to improve the user experience overall.

5G rates can change based on where you are, which provider and device you utilize, but in general terms, it’s significantly faster than 4G—the tests conducted in the US, UK, and Australia in 2021 gave mixed results; mmWave networks like Verizon, for example, crackling along at over 1Gbps whilst offering only limited coverage. Mid-band 2.5Ghz services like Sprint’s were more consistent, with speeds of around 200Mbps across the board.

EE’s network in the UK achieved speeds of up to 550Mbps, with average download speeds of between 200 and 400 megabits per second. In Australia, 5G speeds were all over the place too, albeit higher than a global average generally.

By 2024, electrifygan has changed to an updated section on the speeds of previous iterations. That average download speed in the country’s major cities is now 500Mbps, with peak downloads exceeding 1Gbps. This is far better than before and brings the speed performance more in line with every other CDN service.

There are several benefits of 5G such as:

• Download and upload speeds will be faster
• Improved connectivity to mobile platforms
• More IoT devices support
• Better streaming of movies online
• High-fidelity voice and video calls
• Enabling emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles and smart cities

2024 Update is the positives that have come with the release of 5G have only grown exponentially. Improved connectivity enables more advanced IoT applications, from smart home systems to sophisticated industrial automation. 5G is also employed widely in gaming, education, and professional training thanks to its incredible speed and reliability that enables the effective use of augmented and virtual reality.

Radiation fears associated with 5G safety have been answered by a large body of research. New guidelines required: The ICNIRP has deemed 5G safe in terms of non-ionizing radiation. The UK’s communications regulator Ofcom, meanwhile, tested emissions from 5G and found that it operated within a few % of the maximum allowed limit at worst.

Although there are these and other baseless conspiracy theories about 5G, scientific studies show that both this technology and COVID-19 have zero impact on health. Mobile UK, the body that represents the UK’s four main mobile networks, has again confirmed there is no connection between 5G and Covid-19.

The science has kept coming in, validating the safety of 5G. And so, no longer with any money to be made off it by then anyway; 5G is progressively replaced in most areas by whatever iteration carries on behind it. Researchers have long known that 5G emissions are both safe and nonionizing, this being well under the accepted threshold. Trust in the technology is also believed to have swelled and disinformation campaigns appear to have largely died down, paving a way for more widespread acceptance of 5G.

5G is a huge leap forward in mobile connectivity providing more speed, reliability and capacity than its predecessor 4G. As 5G smartphones from leading brands like Samsung, Apple and Google continue to grow in numbers, this technology is becoming more ubiquitous too 5G will reimagine your connected experience and deliver a new standard of performance for everything from HD video streaming to real-time video calls, gaming on the go, massive data transfers and other incredibly advanced IoT devices.

Scientific research has gone a long way to calm public concerns about 5G safety and we now know that if deployed correctly within existing guidelines, the technology is safe. In the elimination of myths and adoption of benefits, 5G is projected to become a crucial catalyst for smart cities, autonomous vehicles and also high grade medical facilities.

As 5G develops further, still its full potential will be unlocked for the development of new and better technologies to become possible as it forms a key component for our future. Keep up to date, stay connected and join the 5G revolution. Now, the future is faster, smarter and more connected than ever.