Autonomous cars, virtual reality, smart cities, and robots working online: they will all work with 5G technology very soon. 5G promises to open the door for new surgical procedures, safer means of transportation, and instant communication with emergency and distress services.

In telecommunications, 5G stands for fifth generation of cellular network technologies. Is the successor of the 4G technology, and it is expected to be available for everyone in 2020.

More than just improving speed, people expect that 5G technology develops an entire ecosystem to meet the communication needs of hundreds of thousands of devices connected to the Internet with a fair balance between speed, latency, and costs.

The most notable evolution in comparison with current 4G and 4.5G networks (advanced LTE) is that it will not only raise data speed, since the new uses of Internet and communication will require new types of improved performance like “low latency”, that provides a key element with real time interaction with servers using cloud server.

Contrary to current Internet services that sacrifice performance to fully use the existing wireless technologies (3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, etc.), 5G networks will be designed to reach the level of performance the Internet needs, in turn it will make it possible to feel the world is connected and ubiquitous.

Experts say these are the 3 main advantages the fifth generation cellular network will bring:

– Greater Speed

The speed of 4G (the one that likely in your pocket right now) is 1 Gbps per second. The new network, in its fullest capacity, will be capable to offer a standard speed of 20 Gbps per second, according to British Ofcom.

The Wall Street Journal explains that downloading a Spotify playlist of one hour long lasted seven minutes with 3G, 20 seconds with 4G, and 0,6 milliseconds with 5G.

– Battery Saver

QUALCOMM, the chip fabricant, has promised that the first 5G cell phones models will have a “battery that will last an entire day.” The battery saving is because 5G technology lets 4G infrastructure do the work, remaining inactive until the user undergoes processes that require faster speeds.

– High Coverage even in Crowds

It is not casual that Japan wishes to have its 5G network ready before the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. The 5G infrastructure allows more devices to be connected at the same time. It is more potent so it will help reducing the electromagnetic bottle neck when there is crowding, especially in urban areas.

The deployment of 5G is set to be completed during next year, the transition will be gradual.