Alright, now one of the big pieces of news to come out of CES this year can
be summed up and well two letters really—5G. I guess a number in there somewhere
5G is the next big thing coming up. You should keep your eye on this because
this is gonna be a big deal and not just for your phone. So, I'm here with Shane.
He's from D-link and he's showing us a device here that actually won a CES
Innovation Award this year. Now, this very fancy looking box here is going to bring
5G technology to your home, but we'll get there in just a second. Shane tell me a
little bit about what 5G actually is. Let's break that down for the consumer.
Yeah, so 5G is basically just the next step after 4G. What it's going to do is
bring you faster speeds to a mobile or cellular network. Right now 4G, in a
theoretical world, you can get about a max speed of 150 megabits per second or
300 megabits per second. But 5G will be able to get to you in a theoretical
world is about three gigabits per second I mean those numbers are astounding, and
if you are used to 4G already like most of us are, we're talking about lab
results here. So think of it this way, in a lab you're getting 150 megabits per
second or 300 megabits per second. Obviously, you're not getting that on
your phone, necessarily, but what we're talking about here is just what sort of
a jump you're going to see. So, if in the lab they're seeing a jump from 150
megabits per second to 3 gigs per second, just imagine what that's gonna do for your phone.
Maybe you won't see 3 gigabits per second, but you're gonna see some
pretty serious speed improvements. So, anyway, now that we know what 5G is going
to do potentially, at least, let's talk about what this device is gonna do as
far as taking it from a phone based only application to home application as well.
So what is this? So what we're going to do is basically the same way your cell
phone works right now where you have a 4G connection and you can use it as a
hotspot to produce Wi-Fi, you know, for other people are using it. This will do
the same thing but in your home for your devices. So, right now you may have a
router and a modem from your internet company or a gateway; and you connect
that to the coaxial cable. With this, all you need is a SIM card and a power adapter.
You can plug that in, and as long as it receives a 5G signal, it will take
that 5G connection directly up to three gigabits
per second and convert that to Wi-Fi, for all the devices in your home. So, this is
going to operate through the company that we use to get 4G right now, so if
I'm a Verizon customer or an AT&T customer that's the company that's going
to be delivering the service that runs through this device just like on my phone.
Is that right? Yes, so right now the company's best
position to handle this are cell companies, because they have the towers up already, and so the infrastructure
is kind of already in place for 5G.
What they can do is they can take the antennas that are on there, and they can retrofit them with
5G antennas to provide that service. It doesn't mean that other companies such
as Comcast and Cox and your regular broadband providers couldn't
jump in on it, it's just that cell phone companies are in the best position to use
it right now. So, do we feel like this 5G technology, and what this device
represents, is going to be an improvement on what we're seeing in cable and fiber?
You know, when I hear 5G I'm thinking of cellphones.
But is this gonna be better than what I even have running through my house right now?
Theoretically, of course, because it depends on the connection; but the
average fixed broadband speed in the u.s. right now is about 70 megabits per second.
We got that from an article written by Forbes. And what that means is
you're paying for about 70 megabits per second on average, but you don't always
get that. With this, you can get speeds up to 40 times faster than that.
And the reason for that is because you have different ways of connecting.
So, right now with a cable internet, it's fast, it's good, it's strong. But around six to seven o'clock
when people are coming home and they're all connecting, you start to see
that bottleneck. Because it's all that traffic's going at the same time.
With 5G you have multiple towers, so that traffic can be redirected in different places
and kind of keep it fast at the same time. That's awesome and that's gonna be
great for what we're doing in our homes now, we're trying to get everything on
two connected devices whether it's, you know, through Wi-Fi or other means and
everything everything now is connected. It's your fridges and your pillows.
Everything is smart and everything is connected! And so a device that's able to
handle that much bandwidth is gonna come in handy for all of us.
One of the benefits of this device is that it also has z-wave. So, there are smart
devices out there that use those technologies to connect, so it can
help connect those as well. Additionally it also works with a range
of our Exo routers and range extenders, which expand that coverage, so it can
give you that coverage in your home, that full speed, and still use one Wi-Fi name.
So, we really think it's going to be a complete solution. Well, you know the
D-link brand from previous generations of this, but this is going to be bringing
5G speeds to your home. So, keep an eye out for it as 5G expands and it becomes more
readily available. You can see this becoming a really big deal if, for
instance, you can get 5G in your area but they never bothered to run a cable out
to your house, and so you've been relying on, you know, dial-up or a satellite
internet or something. This could be a really big deal for you, so I hope you'll
keep an eye on it and I hope you'll keep an eye on us as well. Make sure you hit
that subscribe button. Hit the the bell icon as well, so you can follow us for
more CES content from here at CES 2019. Make sure you're following along and
comment below if there's any questions that you have about 5G. Either we'll
answer them, or, because we're stupid, we'll e-mail this guy and have him
answer it for us. Anyway, hit us up below thanks for watching guys and we'll see
you at the next booth
you