Experts share visions of 5G wireless at CableLabs InformED Wireless event in NYC Credit: Jon Gold / Network World 5G wireless is coming, but it has a lot of challenges to overcome, and we’re not going to be enjoying its blazing speeds until 2020 at least. But, at cable industry group CableLabs’ InformED Wireless event on Wednesday in New York, several experts helped provide new hints about the shape of the technology to come. One of the biggest hurdles, it seems, is physics – 5G is going to be a millimeter-wave technology, operating at a much higher frequency than existing Wi-Fi. That’s great if the goal is to move a lot of information quickly – 5G speeds could top 6Gbps in the field – but it raises the issue of range. + ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD:Cable industry players eye wireless expansion, say analysts | Intel starts baking speedy FPGAs into chips Tim Burke, vice president of strategic technology at cable company Liberty Global, said that there are serious technical challenges still to overcome with 5G, and that most of them have to do with the known high-frequency problems of short transmission range, an inability to handle non-line-of-sight transmission, and getting through structures. “It’s really tough to get through walls or any building materials,” he said. “We’ll have to see that change.” NYU professor Ted Rappoport, however, offered the view that these technological hurdles aren’t insurmountable. Much of his recent work has centered on the idea that millimeter-wave can be made to work the way 5G stakeholders need it to, thanks to directional antennas similar to the MU-MIMO setups now on the market as 802.11ac wave 2, among other things. “We proved to the world that millimeter waves work, we proved that you don’t need a line of sight, and we proved that the power levels can be comparable,” he said. Complicating the decision-making around 5G technology is the issue that it will have to handle a substantially more diverse workload than current wireless networks. Bjorn Ekelund, a technology and business strategist with Ericsson, told the crowd that Internet-connected sensors, high-volume media, IoT, and smart vehicles were all considerations for 5G stakeholders. The trick, he said, is to create a network that can compartmentalize its various tasks efficiently, and a framework that can be used to control it programmatically. “You can allocate logical parts of your network or physical infrastructure to a particular application or use case,” he said. Regardless, 5G still isn’t just around the corner – completion of the standards work could take two or three years, according to Ekelund’s presentation, and product development could push the deployment date to 2020 or 2021. Related content news Nvidia unveils new Blackwell systems, accelerates release of Spectrum-X networking The systems, announced at Computex in Taipei, will power what the company calls ‘AI factories’. By Lynn Greiner Jun 02, 2024 4 mins Generative AI GPUs news Singapore government pushes energy-efficient data center plan The city state is looking at greener energy sources and wants to make every aspect of data center energy consumption, from cooling to coding, more efficient. By John Leyden May 31, 2024 4 mins Energy Efficiency Data Center Design Data Center Management news Everyone but Nvidia joins forces for new AI interconnect Hyperscalers and chip makers, including AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, HPE, Intel and Microsoft, are partnering to develop a high-speed chip interconnect to rival Nvidia’s NVLink technology. By Andy Patrizio May 30, 2024 4 mins CPUs and Processors Data Center news AT&T taps Cisco fixed 5G wireless gateways for WAN service Cisco Meraki devices are also part of fixed 5G wireless services from T-Mobile and Verizon. By Michael Cooney May 30, 2024 3 mins 5G Wireless Security WAN PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS NEWSLETTERS Newsletter Promo Module Test Description for newsletter promo module. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe