What's up, OGs?
Trace here.
And I have been thinking, what is going on with 5G?
Like, what is it?
What's 4G?
What's LTE?
How many G's are there?
And are we going to get all of them, like eventually?
I've been in the magical land of Europe for the last month.
And I've been using the Swiss and Hellenic internets.
Hey Google, how do you say, internet in Greek?
In Greek, you would say, [GREEK]..
[GREEK]
But it should have been slowest slowy oh, because it was slow.
I could not even get through a single episode of a television
show without buf-fer-ing, which was
made worse by all the ads for the 5G service
that they were going to have someday.
Seriously, they were everywhere in every country I visited.
Obviously, 5G means fifth generation.
But how did we get here?
And will it actually be better?
Debatable.
Let's crack open this digital chestnut and roast it.
Hua, it's good to be back.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, everybody.
Trace here.
Uno Dos of Trace.
Welcome.
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OK, 5G, let's kick into it.
The G stands for generation.
And each G describes one of the generations
of wireless technology.
But as simple as that sounds, and before you get too
bought into this, I feel I should point out
that that's kind of a big lie.
A big part of generations is the marketing.
Remember all the confusion about LTE versus 4G?
There are differences, and we'll get there.
But it was confusing in the marketing.
Anyway, as 5G rolls out, we're getting this marketing attack
again.
But there are actually frameworks and standards
for the G's.
The thing is, sometimes we get half G's or 3/4 G's.
And you don't ever hear about those,
cause they're not easy to market.
So let's talk about them in order.
0, 1 and 2G were just about making and getting calls
without wires.
That's it.
Three and four have been about adding data transmission
to those devices.
And 5-- [SIGHS] 5G is promising to like,
anoint your first born girl as Khaleesi or something,
seriously.
According to a paper in the International Journal
of Computer Science and Management Studies,
5G is, quote, "assumed as the perfection level
of wireless communication in mobile technology."
Ahh, we might not need any wires at all for this system.
And instead, every wireless device
will communicate over the air across the system
with each other.
This is a big video.
So let me lay out the questions you're
going to be able to answer if you watch the whole thing.
Plus, you're going to get a free code for Dashlane at the end.
So you definitely want to stick around.
So here are the questions.
What is 5G?
What about the other G's?
What will it do for me?
How will all these new devices work?
And is this so much better?
Plus, what about 6G?
Yeah, we're going there.
So let's start back at zero.
According to the IJCSMS, before the 1970s,
there was what we can look back and dub 0G mobile telephony
technologies.
Prior to cell phones, there were CB radios, police dispatch
radios, and the like.
And eventually, they did what they called 0.5G.
And they formalized the telephony part,
as we think of it, the dialing part.
By using VHF radio bands to connect these devices
to the regular telephone network,
the portable boxes got their own phone numbers.
By the end of the 1970s, the idea of 1G
was established, as the first cell phones were created.
1G refers to an analog radio signal sent from your device
to a tower, then transmitted through the phone network.
In the first cell phones, there were basically
no security at all.
Your voice would normally fall from 85 to a few hundred hertz.
And these old cell phones modulated your voice up
to 150 megahertz and then transmitted that signal.
And that's it.
Anyone who picked up the signal could reverse the modulation.
And they would get your voice-- your phone call.
Super insecure, like even more insecure
than I was in high school.
And that is saying something.
2G was created in 1991 and changes the analog signal
into digital.
This shift meant that the signals were more efficient.
But they couldn't go as far.
Think about the radio in your car.
With analog, the signal would fully
fade as you drive away from town on your favorite radio station.
But with digital radio, you either have a good signal.
There's no in between.
Being digital meant that 2G phones could be encrypted.
But also, that there were these little empty spaces
in the data stream.
And engineers realized that these would allow
for short messages to be sent.
They called them short message service or SMS.
The text message was more.
That's right.
The text message is older than the movie, Jurassic Park.
And by the way, they should not cost anything,
because all they're doing is piggybacking on data
that's already being set.
But don't get me started.
2G is also where the term CDMA and GSM come in.
CDMA is code division multiple access.
It was created by allied forces during World War II
to keep the Nazis from jamming their signals.
GSM was invented in Finland and quickly became the standard
across Europe.
And it means global system for mobile communication
was invented for mobile phones.
And it's one of the most common standards for cell phone use
worldwide.
GSM is what allows for international roaming.
Your phone, no matter who the carrier is here in the US,
likely has GSM built in, but we'll come back to that.
The basic difference between the two
is how the calls are sent to the system.
CDMA networks assign every handset a unique ID.
And the network picks out the calls and data
based on that ID.
This is why you couldn't just swap phones on Verizon.
You had to physically go to the store
so they could update the network's white list
with your new unique ID number.
And then you could use the phone and would take time.
It was annoying.
And nobody wanted to go to the damn store-- no mom--
no.
GSM, on the other hand, is not user ID-based but time-based.
So if three people call in the same network in the same area
and, thus, are using the same radio frequencies,
each user gets a time slot and stick to it.
Those three calls in an order would
look like this, but really, really, really fast.
The network, then, takes all the traces,
say, and put them together into a single call.
Sim cards could be swapped out in different phones.
You didn't have to go to the network carrier.
In order to get on the white list,
you could just swap it in.
And the network knew who you were.
At this point, we start to see what they would call 2 and 1/2
and 2 and 3/4 G.
This means engineers are adding more data
access to this digital stream.
The standards here were called GPRS and Edge.
GPRS is the general packet radio service.
I remember seeing that on my very first Nokia box phone
in 2004.
So nostalgia.
Oh, my god, OK.
GPRS was a protocol that let devices use the GSM
network to move more of these little data packets
from the worldwide web to you and back again.
GPRS was slower than even dial up.
But it was internet.
And it was anywhere.
And it was in your pocket.
Pretty sure in 2004 I paid $45 for 600 minutes, 150 text
messages, and a few megabytes of GPRS internet.
The first data connection, as we think of it now,
the always on connection was called Edge.
That's the e on your phone.
When you have bad service, they mostly
have turned that off now.
It means enhanced data rates for GSM evolution or enhanced GPRS.
While GPRS would peak at about 114 kilobytes per second,
Edge had a blazing fast 384 kilohertz
per second, about as fast as the speed dial up modem.
This all happened around the year 2000,
by the way, when cell phones looked a lot like this, not
exactly Jobsian revolutions yet.
Remember when you're going on the stairs to your hall meeting
as an RA at Western Michigan University?
That was me.
And the theme of the meeting was anything but clothes.
So I wore a sleeping bag.
I put my Nokia in a little pocket of the sleeping bag.
And I slipped on the stairs and bam, landed right on my screen.
And it cracked.
First person I knew to have a cracked screen.
Now, it's just the millennial struggle.
Whew.
So from there, we get to 3G and 3 and 1/2G.
Now, we start to see the standards organizations coming
up to help all the countries and companies work
with the same roadmap.
Around this time, the Third Generation Partnership Project
or 3GPP was created to shepherd the first 3G phones
and to shepherd the first 3G phones
and create standards under the United Nations International
Telecommunications Union.
The ITU created the IMT 2000, which
is a standards document that is so, so boring so don't
worry about the details.
But the point is, it's the standard that everyone
could use and said, 3G promises quote,
"faster communication services, including
voice and fax and internet, anytime and anywhere
with seamless global roaming."
And DBH 19 years later, that's exactly what we got.
The first 3G network launched in Japan in 2001.
But there weren't too many devices that it could actually
take advantage of it.
When the first iPhone came out in 2007,
it didn't even have 3G.
It had 2 and 1/2G Edge.
So from there, we get in this cycle where the IT,
you would set requirements.
The 3GPP would work to create iterative technical standards.
And the phone manufacturers and networks
implement those technical standards.
Then the standards are GSM and GPRS and Edge and HSPA
and HSPA+ and so on.
And this is where the rubber really meets the information
superhighway, because 3G lets us actually
use the real internet if more slowly than maybe
we're used to today.
As the 3GPP started to crack the whip and release
standard after standard, 3G data speeds
would increase from 1.92 megabits per second
or five times faster than Edge up
to what we would call the LTE standards, which can
reach 100 megabits per second.
Download speeds roughly what we have now under the 3G standard.
Yeah, we're technically still using,
in some cases, 3G standards.
I know your phone might say 4G.
But it might be using a 3G standard,
because they include YMAX and HSPA+.
They are updates to the original 3G standards.
And, in fact, you might have a 3G phone in your pocket
that uses those, even though the top corner might say 4G,
because there's no rules that say they can't lie
to you about what G you're on.
How you feeling about that 3G phone now, Sam?
[SNAP] I was already joking, though.
The newest phones are faster.
But when the standards were set in 2008,
no one knew exactly how to get there.
So the first 3G advanced phones weren't technically
4G according to the ITU standard.
They just wanted to sell you new phones back then.
The latest crop of mobiles use real LTE and LTE advanced,
as well as LTE Advanced Pro, which we would call 4 and 1/2G.
And that's why networks can keep bragging about speed increases.
And LTE, in general, is why Verizon and Sprint now
have SIM cards, because the LTE standard requires them.
LTE allows users to call and use data at the same time
just like GSM standards.
Remember when you couldn't do that on Sprint and Verizon?
Yeah, so silly.
So now, we are comfortably in 4G lamp.
Speeds peak at around 100 megabits per second for mobile
and one gigabit per second for stationary hotspots
as per the ITU standard for 4G.
5G standards were just decided.
And networks are clearing out frequency ranges
and building new physical antennas to accommodate.
The CDMA GSM fight is now over.
And over the next year or two, 3G and 2G networks
are going to start to be retired and turned off.
You won't be able to use them at all because they just
won't be there.
Cell phones and Wi-Fi don't actually
use a magical bit of the spectrum, just
the regular old UHF radio band.
It sits above the VHF used by FM and amateur radio operators,
because there's only so much physical space in the spectrum.
And there are only so many devices
broadcasting in this part of the EM spectrum that we can use.
The ITU decided on these three bands for 5G rollout,
meaning some older spectrum needs to be cleared out.
The newest band, while the super speeds are going to go,
they're called millimeter waves or MM waves,
because, yeah, they're small.
As you probably know, the electromagnetic spectrum
is a physical thing.
So the waves of energy actually exist in real life.
So we can't just keep packing more stuff into the spaces
that we've reserved for other things,
like, for example, your favorite radio station or your home
Wi-Fi network.
Each of these technology advances
need a specific band of infrastructure
that they can use to communicate even though it's invisible.
Because while 2, 3 and 4G use lower power
radio frequencies, 5G might use 26 gigahertz and 28 gigahertz.
Noah and NASA have filed a complaint with the FCC,
because the weather satellites ping
water vapor in the atmosphere using 23.8 gigahertz
frequencies.
They bounce the signal off of the water
to detect if it's there.
The 5G is operating at 24 gigahertz.
And that could interfere with the satellites
making water vapor measurements for forecasting.
And that could make weather forecasting not impossible.
The FCC could set stricter limits for the networks.
And that might solve the problem.
But this is just one reason why these things
tend to take so long.
That's why the FCC licenses Spectrum
after all to keep things wirelessly orderly, right?
This is why 5G is going to have to ratchet up a bit to MM waves
for the fastest speeds, which is going
to make some things better--
some things worse.
One problem is scattering.
Think of these little MM waves, like blue light.
Blue light is also little.
So it scatters when it hits the air in the atmosphere.
It's why the sky is blue.
Red, on the other hand, has long waves,
which make it through the atmosphere and turn sunsets
orange.
5G's MM waves are going to be more like the blue light.
They'll be able to move a lot of data really fast,
unless they scatter.
And concrete and bricks scatter frequencies in this range.
So does your body because we're mostly water.
And water is pretty dense, meaning when it's raining,
5G's services might be kind of crappy.
But those are problems for future us's to solve, right?
Once we got the network up and running--
and to do that, we're going to have
to build lots of little small cells,
because these waves don't travel as far.
Maybe as far as a kilometer and probably more like 500 meters.
So you're going to have little small cells
within 500 meters of your house, your work, or your university,
for example, to give you fast mobile internet at home.
In the urban areas, they'll probably
be out in the environment, as well.
But once you get out of the cities,
you'll end up on a different band.
And you'll get slightly slower speeds.
And if you're out in the country,
you'll end up on an even lower frequency
that will travel a lot farther.
The peak speed near the cells will
be something like 10 or 20 gigabits per second,
they think, and will support more than 1,000 times
more devices at a time than 4G does.
And together, this network would mean
that you could be connected to the internet so quickly
with such low latency, so responsively that you
could maybe drive a car remotely or do surgery
from another spot with 5G.
The thing is, we don't actually know what 5G is yet, really,
after all this.
You don't even know.
We don't even know, because the ITU 2020
standards haven't come out yet.
They won't come out till 2020.
But again, this all comes back to marketing.
We're hearing about this a lot, because we need public support.
Like a new Marvel movie, the hype machine
has to start early for something like a major tech update,
especially since with 5G, these little cells have
to be installed everywhere.
And we'll broadcast as well as receive.
So the networks need to know that it's worth their time.
Sidebar, I know this is a concern.
But MM waves are not dangerous.
High frequencies do not mean high energies.
They are drastically different energies and frequencies
than anything like a gamma ray or an X-ray.
In fact, they sit next to microwaves
and infrared in the EM spectrum.
And sure-- microwave ovens are fun.
But they need 1,000 watts or more just to get your leftover
dusted wets to an edible temp in two minutes.
This is about energy levels.
And these are very low.
MM waves are not dangerous at the energies
we are talking about.
If you're one of those people who has a really old cell phone
and is worried about the 3G network,
like if you're a Luddite, hello.
Thanks for turning on your Nintendo Wii
and for tuning into YouTube.
To keep you connected, providers aren't going to just turn off
their old networks right away.
If you're far from a 5G antenna, you'll still get regular old 4
or maybe 4 and 1/2G--
maybe even 3G for a little while.
But inevitably, it will get retired.
Just like with any other technological advance,
we had no idea what we would do with these tiny little internet
connected pocket computers until we had them.
But there's only so much physical space
to have them communicate with each other.
Using the small cells, 5G is going
to enable a whole new explosion of mobile data access that
will cause--
well, right now, we can only guess.
We have no idea.
It's going to be big, but so are 3G and 4G.
But what we do know is the mobile internet
is already huge.
And it's not even getting to everyone yet.
Only about half of everyone on earth
use the internet within a 90-day rolling period.
And 5G isn't going to connect more people necessarily.
You just make the people already online get there faster.
We still need equitable distribution
of this utility, not to mention a bunch of other regulations
on how companies can use the data once we have it.
Fun fact-- in March of 2019, researchers
had their very first meeting on a 6G.
Yeah, we're already on to the next thing-- has science--
looks like we're going to see 62 by 2030, according to one
of the first papers on it.
We'll have a society that is, quote, "data driven"
enabled by a near instant unlimited wireless
connectivity with distributed computing--
the idea that every computer could work on any problem
together, because they're networked with super fast data
connections.
And, of course, we will see artificial intelligence,
like applications.
6G still a long way off.
Really quick before we end--
security is going to be a problem in the future as much
as it is now if not more.
And the sooner we realize that humans
are the least secure part of our system, I think the better.
That's why I spent a week clicking reset password
all over the web and moved everything
into a password manager.
Dashlane-- Dashlane is fantastic.
It's a secure encrypted password manager
that will create super secure passwords for you,
store them safely, and fill them on sites you visit,
whether you're on a phone, tablet, or computer.
You don't have to remember your passwords anymore,
which is great, because humans literally cannot remember
100's of truly random secure passwords for every website
the modern internet user needs to visit.
And there are many.
So unless you think you can be more creative than being
millions or billions of passwords
that a computer can crack in minutes,
you should get a password manager like Dashlane.
Dashlane take steps to keep you safe by monitoring for breaches
in sites you use and alerting you
if you need to update your password, which is awesome.
Just try it.
And I know that you'll love not needing to remember hundreds
of passwords.
And you'll get that cozy sense of security too.
Dashlane is free to use.
But for the first 200 of the nerd fam
who sign up for Dashlane premium, you will get 10% off.
Just use the code, trace, or go to dashlane.com/trace to sign
up.
It supports your digital safety and supports
the making of Uno Dos of Trace.
It's a win-win.
So thanks.
In the end, 5G is the continuation
of the march of technology, like how
we went from horses to horse carriages to horseless carriage
to self-driving carriages.
Knowledge, like anything, is iterative.
It might seem like the future.
But 5G is about the same old revolution
that we've been having all these years.
And honestly, I think that's way more
profound than this new wireless revolution.
We've been on this path for a while.
And thanks to science, engineering, technology,
mathematics and dedicated humans everywhere, soon--
we're going to change everything.
Again, thanks for watching, everyone.
I really hope you enjoyed this video.
Make sure you subscribe.
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You can always join the Patreon if you really, really care.
And thank you, thank you, thank you for watching.
I'm Trace.
I'll see you in the future.