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back to article ITU's latest specs show that 5G is not just a wireless network

We can no longer see 5G as a wireless standard alone. Its heart may still be a 3GPP-defined radio, but to deliver commercial benefits to operators (old or new), wireline links will be as important as wireless ones, and architectural change will be more important than an updated air interface. Several important developments …

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  1. Warm Braw

    IP can be also implemented on top of ICN

    This has interesting implications for IP networks in general and IPv6 in particular.

    Underlying the TCP/IP philosophy for many years (though not always) has been the assumption that you have an end-to-end IP network. If instead IP were simply an access protocol (and possibly merely a legacy access protocol) running on top of another technology - especially if it "assigns reusable names to packets, or groups of packets, independently of the distribution channel, and it does not require the resolution of endpoint identifiers before using a name" - you could potentially continue to use IPv4 for longer (because you get many more usable IPv4 addresses if the addresses are merely endpoint identifiers and not also routing information). By which time, NGP may, just, be around.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seems back-to-front to me. "Our new network is faster than ever; but for it to work well, we need lots of internal caching"

    Sounds suspiciously like going back to the days of X25, where the network was intelligent and the edge was dumb. And the ultimate reason is that the carriers want to find more ways to charge for the network, and tie you to their particular offering.

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  3. Mage Silver badge

    5G was never really about faster Mobile

    You need more smaller cells for faster mobile. The 5G process was always more about integration of infrastructure.

    Just ignore all the 5G hype. It's irrelevant.

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    1. Commswonk
      Reply Icon

      Re: 5G was never really about faster Mobile

      If this article is anything to go by 5G was dreamt up to provide a buzzword - rich environment.

      Bingo!

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 5G was never really about faster Mobile

      You can get faster mobile with higher frequencies since there is more bandwidth available for use at say 28 GHz than there is where current cellular lives.

      I just don't see the point of gigabit cellular. There's no use case for it, and designing a mobile device with 4x MIMO is not easy just for bragging rights. For some reason people care, I already saw an article saying the Galaxy S8 will have a "big advantage" over the iPhone 8, because Apple will probably handicap the Qualcomm X16 chipset to match the capabilities of Intel XMM7460, so instead of gigabit LTE like the S8/X16 is capable of the poor iPhone 8 will be able to do "only" 400 Mbps.

      As if ANYONE needs that extra speed on a phone! For what, to watch two dozen 4K streams at once?

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      1. PracticalApplications
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        Re: 5G was never really about faster Mobile

        Who said phones were the target for 5G? Much easier and faster to deploy / retrofit a neighbourhood for gig connections over the air vs trying to run GPON. Think how fast India rolled out comma by focussing on MBB delivery.

        This is a tired argument that says we will never need more of 'x'. Of course we will need 5G bandwidth. It opens up what could be invented in the future. Period. If the tech industry didn't blindly push forward with "faster, better" most of the tech we enjoy today simply wouldn't exist.

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