Nokia has taken one step closer to 5G mobile networks with the creation of new technology that can deliver ultra-fast data speeds.
The Finnish company, which manages mobile data networks across the globe, just announced it’s bringing 4.5G Pro to mobile operators by the end of the year. According to the firm, 4.5G Pro delivers ten times the speeds of conventional 4G networks, allowing network operators to offer peak speeds of one gigabit (1,000 megabits) per second.
Read more: What is 5G and when will it come to the UK? 5G networks explained
More than 90 mobile networks around the world are currently using Nokia’s 4.5G technology, but this speed increase is one more step closer to 5G networks. Such speeds could finally make it possible to watch high-resolution 4K video and achieve lag-free video calling.
Although it hasn’t announced a release date yet, Nokia is also poised to release 4.9G in the 'near future' – an upgrade which it says will push data speeds to several gigabits per second.
If you’re holding out for the release of 5G, however, you’ll need to sit tight a little longer. Global rollout of 5G isn’t expected to start until 2020, and telecom experts Ovum predict that by 2021 there will only be 24 million 5G customers in the world.
That might sound like a lot, but right now there are more than half a billion 4G customers so it may well be a long time before 5G becomes an industry standard. With the growth of the Internet of Things making the need for low-latency, high-capacity ever more pressing, it’s now a matter of when, rather than if, 5G will come to UK networks.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
