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# Tech Time: 5G is the Future of Mobile Internet

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yNBmMX9Z.m3u8" -->
## Video: Tech Time: 5G is the Future of Mobile Internet

[Watch (HLS stream): Tech Time: 5G is the Future of Mobile Internet](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yNBmMX9Z.m3u8) (1:41)

![Tech Time: 5G is the Future of Mobile Internet](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/yNBmMX9Z/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2015-12-02. It's what you expected to come after 4G. Tech Editor Alex Fitzpatrick tells you what you need to know._


---

Jul 27, 2023 7:15 PM UTC

---

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### Tech Time: The Future of Transportation

---


## Transcript

[ MUSIC ] We've all been there. Your away from home out of the house and your trying to stream the big game on your smart phone but your data connection isn't that good so it keeps buffering and stuttering and generally looking terrible. Well good news the next generation of cell data technology should be here sooner than you think Promising more bandwidth and higher speeds. The big upgrade is called 5G, like 4G and 3G before it. What's a little weird, though, is even the cell phone companies don't know what 5G is yet. Let's back up for a minute. Every G is basically just a standard of certain cellular service.

3G brought mobile internet to our smartphones for the first time, and 4G made it a whole lot faster. So the jury's still out on exactly what 5G will be. But everybody agrees on at least a few things. Mostly that it'll be a whole bunch faster with a lot more bandwidth so you can download content to your phone almost instantaneously with no need for a Wi- Fi connection. But the most important part of 5G is that it's being designed to accommodate all the internet connected Stuff we're about to have. Some estimates say that by 2020, we'll have 25 billion devices connected to the Internet. That's everything from smartphones to smarter cars, to Internet connected toasters.

So we'll need some more bandwidth to handle all those devices. So when will you actually get a 5G smartphone? Some carriers, like Verizon are starting tests next year, and And I hope to get a few by 2017. Meanwhile other tech savvy countries like South Korea are pouring money into 5G in hopes of deploying it soon. Still it's not likely we'll see 5G until about 2020. Until then we're stuck with 4G and LTE but honestly even those are pretty good. [ MUSIC ]

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