by Jason Snell
‘Why 5G is the Future (Not the Present)’
Glenn Fleishman has a sensible overview of 5G at TidBITS:
5G won’t be transformative for most people or purposes. Its advantages primarily accrue to cellular carriers, even more so than 3G or 4G, which offered significant boosts in throughput and allowed higher rates over broader areas. 5G will let carriers charge more for service in some cases, handle more customers simultaneously, break into new markets that require higher throughput or low latency, and equip more kinds of devices with ubiquitous high-speed cellular data connections.
This gets it exactly right. 5G really will transform wireless communication over time, and it is important. But it’s not something most consumers need to care about today. Or even tomorrow. Just someday.