How Will 5G Impact/Change Travel |Travel Tech Gadgets

Mar 26, 2019

How Will 5G Impact/Change Travel

5G Connection and How It Will Impact Travel

The much-buzzed-about mobile wireless technology that’s rolling out across the U.S. in a year or so is the 5G connectivity. 5G is coming to both in homes and to our phones, tablets, and laptops. This technology is due to bring huge changes to the tech world and how and where to use our devices.

The change from 4G to 5G is likely to be quite impactful. It is competitive to going from dial-up internet to broadband or cable speed.
You may think that uploading videos, sharing photos, watching movies, collaborating online with coworkers, or having group video calls with family is already fast, vastly available, and reliable. But when you get access to 5G technology, the way and where we use services and our devices is going to improve by a huge leap.

What is 5G?

These are some of the impacts that 5G will have to travel and tech:

While Traveling
» Access massive amounts of data at fast speeds in more locations
» Upload videos of your trip while still on the trip
» Be able to forward family members our favorite videos and high-res photos
» Video calls even better and from places that were previously not able to cast video
» Up-to-the-second changes to our map and travel apps, without having to search for WiFi
» 5G download speeds of 4.5 gigabits a second are possible but the initial median speeds of about 1.4 gigabits are likely to be available at the start. That translates to roughly 20 times faster than the current 4G experience.
» Have you ever wanted to download a few recent episodes of a favorite series to keep the kids occupied on the plane or on long car rides? Not so fun. With 5G though, which is 10 times faster than WiFi, you can download a high-def hour-long show in under 5 seconds.

Travel Research
» Incorporate VR headsets into travel planning and traveling
» Considering computers have become increasingly essential for travel, we will have higher quality video, faster search times, amazing animations and interactive apps to bring travel destinations to live

Most experts predict that 5G won’t be widely available until 2020. But it will be well worth the wait. If there’s anything that everyone can agree on, it’s that speedy internet is a necessity in this day and age.

There are some telecom companies that are already using 5G in their promos even if they don't yet offer it. The tech is new and not fully developed and there are very few phones on the market with 5G capabilities.

Upcoming phones with 5G capability:
» Samsung Galaxy S10 5G
» LG to release LG V50 ThinQ during the first half of 2019
» Moto Z3 from Motorola
» Huawei Mate X foldable phone
» iPhone 12?

Brief History of 5G:
1981: The first commercial 1G network launches at 2.4 kbps.
1991: 2G launches at 64 kbps.
2001: 3G launches at 2 Mbps.
2009: 4G launches at 100 Mbps.
May 14, 2018: Qatar’s Ooredoo claims the first 5G network, but there are no phones to use with it.
Oct. 1, 2018: Verizon claims a customer in Houston, Texas is the first on 5G (but just for home broadband).
Oct. 25, 2018: AT&T claims “the world’s first millimeter wave mobile 5G browsing session with a standards-based device on a mobile 5G network.”
April 3, 2019: South Korea opens its first 5G networks (to six celebrities).
April 5, 2019: The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G goes on sale, allowing regular South Koreans to access the networks.
May 28, 2019: The US completes its first high-band spectrum auction.
Nov. 1, 2019: China turns on its 5G networks.
2020: China is expected to launch a standalone 5G network.
via quartz.com