Is there anything in our lives that moves faster than technology? It would be hard to find anything to rival it. Today, it is an essential part of our world. In a hyperconnected world where something happening in one place can affect the rest of the world, we lead our lives through our screens. When 5G finally becomes a reality, this connection will be even stronger.
Because that is what 5G is bringing with it: total connectivity. It is fast, very fast. In the end, what this new technology really offers us is this: data transmission speeds that are fast enough to change our lives. 5G refers to the fact that it is the fifth generation of mobile networks that we have seen: 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G. To give us an idea, the first of these allowed us to speak by telephone, the second allowed us to send text messages. The third added Internet to our mobile devices and the fourth offered us bandwidth enough to watch videos or surf the web at similar speeds that we had with our home Internet connections. 5G will make us forget all the previous stages.
The technological revolution of the decade
The importance of 5G lies in its speed. This is seen in two main aspects: the browsing speed, which will be at least 20 times faster than 4G, reaching speeds of 1gb/s and latency, or response time will be practically undetectable for a human (1 ms), making the connection practically instant, in real time.
This new generation of networks will enable data to be sent faster and more reliably, so that 1,000 times the amount of data that we currently share can be transmitted. The speed limit which prevents us from doing many things today is bound to disappear. Thanks to this, our homes will be more energy efficient thanks to smart services and home automation, and the speed limit for our domestic connection networks will be a thing of the past.
The importance of developing 5G technology is one of the priorities at institutional and corporate level worldwide. The European Union is firmly committed to the new telecommunications system which will be a fundamental pillar for our future social and economic development. Infrastructures have to be reinforced to support the data traffic that the planet will have to deal with in 2025, so the EU has set up a plan with 700 million euros of public finance for Horizon 2020, while European industry aims to increase this to 3 trillion. For its part, Spain seeks to position itself among the most advanced countries in the deployment of this new technology with the launch of the National 5G Plan, which will try to take advantage of all the opportunities that this new technological reality can offer.