Samsung boasts 7.5Gbps mobile speed record in 5G trial
Samsung Electronics has set the latest speed record for 5G, the emerging successor to LTE, which promises to smash today's mobile broadband speeds.
5G networks are still at least five years away from commercial deployment and its standard is still being hashed out, but in the meantime, the world can enjoy new '5G' speed records set every few months by network vendors.
The latest comes from Samsung, which this week claimed it topped 7.5Gbps while stationary on a 5G network as well as 1.2Gbps while in a vehicle travelling at more than 100kmph.
Samsung conducted its tests over a 28GHz 5G network, which, as it notes, is a higher frequency that offers speed but suffers from a short communications range. The test shows off Samsung's "hybrid adaptive array technology" to overcome the range constraints of higher frequency bands. Last year Samsung achieved 1Gbps on the same band.
Swedish network vendor Ericsson claimed a 5G speed record this July of 5Gbps in the 15GHz frequency band, which in its case showed off its advanced Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology. The company will be running 5G trials with Japan's NTT Docomo and South Korea's SK Telecom.
While 5G is yet to become a standard, the technologies that will eventually make it are being developed for the day when mobile data traffic has pushed LTE networks to their limit. Ericsson expects mobile data to increase ten-fold between 2013 and 2019 as LTE phone subscriptions become the norm and other devices come online.
Samsung's 5G record follows yesterday's announcement by Chinese networking giant Huawei that it would launch "4.5G", which it claims will be commercialised by 2016 and offers peak speeds of around 6Gbps and supports 100,000 connections over one square kilometre. The company is also pouring $600m into 5G research and along with Samsung, Telefonica and BT, is helping fund the UK's '5G Innovation Centre' at the University of Surrey. The £35m centre was announced last year, and is due to be up and running by 2015, when it will house more than 250 researchers and students.
Meanwhile Nokia is looking to launch a 5G test site in Oulu, Finland, where it's hoping to build on its existing developments in LTE and LTE-Advanced.
The European Union in December set aside 'up to €700m' in public funding to support 5G research ahead of 2020 and ensure Europe isn't left out of new developments. More recently, the EU struck a partnership between its own 5G PPP and South Korea’s 5G Forum in an effort to influence the standard.
South Korea in particular has been at the forefront of mobile broadband, having committed about $1.5bn to ensure local telcos build 5G networks by 2020.