In the outskirts of the sleepy commuter town of Guildford, just south of London, plans are underway to build the fastest cellphone network in the world. The work is being done at the University of Surrey, where a leafy campus is dotted with rundown brutalist-style buildings. Here, researchers and some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Samsung and Fujitsu, are collaborating to offer mobile Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than anything currently available.
The work on so-called fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless technology is set to be completed in early 2018 and would, for example, let users download entire movies to smart phones or tablets in less than five seconds, compared with as much as eight minutes with current fourth-generation, or 4G, technology. Companies would also be able to connect millions of devices — including smart watches and tiny sensors on home appliances — to the new cell-phone network, and automakers could potentially test driverless cars around the suburban campus.
A lot of the technology already works in a laboratory environment, said Rahim Tafazolli, director of the university’s research center that oversees the 5G project, which includes almost 70 powerful radio antennas around the 2-square-mile campus. Now, we have to prove it works in real life, he added. The work by Tafazolli and his team puts them at the heart of a heated race. Fueled by people’s insatiable appetite for accessing videos, social media and other entertainment on their mobile devices, many of the world’s largest carriers, like AT&T and NTT DoCoMo of Japan, are rushing to be the first to offer customers this next-generation ultrafast wireless technology.
Everyone is rushing to demonstrate they are a leading player for 5G, said Bengt Nordstrom, co-founder of Northstream, a telecom consulting firm, in Stockholm. Only time will tell who emerges first in the race.