Major Pros And Cons of The 5G Technology

• By Vijaya Bharti
• 27-08-2020
• Technology

Over the past years, we have been able to witness different generations of internet data technology owing to the advancements in smartphone technology. There was a time when we made it through the month using only 1gb data on our smartphones. But the 4G LTE enabled faster streaming, live gaming, and easier access to the internet. Now, we can’t even imagine our lives without having unlimited data.

However, the increasing devices connected to the internet are overloading the bandwidth. Ultimately, 4G is also unable to fulfill its purpose of speed and ease. Fortunately, 5G had been rolled out in the US in 2019 with comprehensive launches to happen throughout 2020.

What does 5G have in store?
The 5th Generation Mobile Network is the upcoming cellular network technology revolution expected to expand across the world in a 5-year period from 2020. 5G will enable an increased bit rate with a peak data rate of 20 Gbps which will significantly speed up content delivery to mobile devices. The iOT devices with 5G will create revolution. It is high time to hire ioT application development companies and mobile app developers for your businesses.

Therefore, bandwidth-intensive applications such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and media services will benefit the most from 5G technology. It will also help developers deploy applications on high speed and lower latency network. Some of the features of 5G technology are:
Zero-latency
Faster response time
Speed up to 10Gbit/s
Extremely high capacity
100 times more devices
Global connectivity

Pros and Cons of the 5G Technology
The numerous features of the 5G technology will benefit students, and professionals such as engineers, doctors, administrative bodies, government, etc. However, like every coin has two sides, the 5G technology has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a look at the major pros and cons of 5G technology:

Advantages of 5G Technology

Increased bandwidth
The most important advantage that 5G technology will bring in is increased bandwidth. This will enable us to access the internet, download files, stream videos, or play online games at an amazingly faster speed. Therefore, 5G technology may have positive impacts on the economy and the users and generate more revenue for cellular providers.

Reduced tower congestion
Unlike the 4G technology, 5G technology requires more towers as its coverage is shorter. Therefore, the congestion and load on the towers may be reduced and the increased bandwidth will aid users in accessing the internet with ease.

New technology on smartphones
Increased network speed will enable a smooth transition from laptops to mobile devices for the same tasks. This may open up new opportunities for the development of advanced mobile applications. 5G technology may make it possible to experience emerging technologies like AI, AR, and VR on our smartphones.

Other advantages
5G technology will have increased efficiency and effectiveness and is expected to support over 60,000 connections. The technology is expected to provide uninterrupted and uniform connectivity across the world. Moreover, it may be possible to control our laptops through our smartphones in the future, use multiple services parallelly, enhance remote physician consultations, faster detection of natural disasters, and many other benefits.

Disadvantages of 5G Technology

5G technology is well-researched and designed to solve radio signal problems in the mobile world. However, it has a few disadvantages due to the lack of technological advancements and security issues in a few regions.

Shorter coverage
The key advantage of 3G technology was that the cell towers could cover long distances with fewer cells as they did not require much bandwidth. However, with 4G networks, the coverage radius was reduced as the networks had to deploy more cells for better bandwidth. This problem will increase with a 5G network as more cell towers will be required to produce a higher bandwidth with lesser coverage. Therefore the 5G technology will not provide widespread coverage to users.

Issues caused by radio-frequency
The radio-frequency range transmitted by the 5G network will range around 6 GHz which is already crowded by various other signals. Satellites, radios, and cell towers use radio frequencies to communicate which results in overcrowding of the radio-frequency range. Therefore, people may experience issues while sending and receiving data signals at 6GHz.

Other disadvantages
Apart from the above disadvantages, we are not yet sure if the claims of the 5G technology with regards to speed will be achieved in all parts of the world. Moreover, many old devices may not be competent with 5G and people will have to upgrade their devices to use the technology. The security and privacy issues still have to be solved and the technology also involves high infrastructure development costs.

The 5G technology is yet to be launched in different countries and therefore it is only possible to estimate the pros and cons. However, the claims by researchers and various reports on the technology have already got everyone on their toes to leverage this technology to its full potential.

We are yet to find out how the 5G network will capitalize on its advantages and reduce the impact of its disadvantages on users. If the technology is able to provide increased bandwidth with minimum problems, we are sure to experience rapid technological innovations and developments.