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There’s a big snag, though: It turns out that those very high speeds are dependent on almost line-of-sight connections to 5G-enabled cell towers (or smaller base stations placed throughout a city) with almost no obstructions between them. Wireless carriers could deliver an alternative without laying down physical wires to every home. Landline internet companies like Comcast, Cox, and others may face serious competition-especially when they’re the only option for speedy home internet in a certain area. If 5G were to consistently reach 1 gigabit speeds and higher, it would beat typical American home cable internet connections, making it more comparable to fiber. According to Ookla’s analytics gathered from, the average 5G speeds among three major cell carriers in the US ranged from about 68 to 192 Mbps in the first quarter of 2022. But those Verizon numbers are much higher than actual data on the ground. In 2020, Verizon touted nearly 1 Gigabit/second 5G rates in Chicago that would allow someone to download a 600 MB video in about 34 seconds, versus 2.3 minutes at LTE speeds. Specifically, the specification promises a maximum latency of 4ms on 5G versus 20ms on 4G LTE.īut while firms have promised a lot from 5G, the real-world results have been mixed. 5G promises to significantly reduce latency, which means faster load times and improved responsiveness when doing just about anything on the internet. That means 5G could potentially be a hundred times faster than the current 4G technology-at its theoretical maximum speed, anyway. While 4G tops out at a theoretical 100 megabits per second (Mbps), 5G tops out at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps).
5G DOWNLOAD SPEED UPGRADE
Unless existing 4G or LTE devices contain 5G-compatible radio hardware, they cannot upgrade to 5G with a software update. To use 5G, you need a device (such as a smartphone) that supports it with special hardware inside.