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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a plan to free up spectrum for 5G wireless service.
The Federal Communications Commission next month will vote on a proposal to help identify and free up wireless spectrum at very high frequencies that could be used to power fifth-generation, or 5G, cellular networks. The agency will do as it did with the development of 4G LTE and stay out of the way of industry innovators as they define and develop 5G technology, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in announcing the proposal Monday.
"Turning innovators loose is far preferable to expecting committees and regulators to define the future," he said. "Instead, we will make ample spectrum available and then rely on a private sector-led process for producing technical standards best suited for those frequencies and use cases."
[...] 5G speeds could be 10 to 100 times higher than those of today's 4G networks. Even though standards for 5G have yet to be developed, the technology is expected to enable everything from self-driving cars to remote surgeries done via robots to school field trips through the human body made possible by virtual reality gear.
The hype around 5G has been building over the past year, with wireless operators like AT&T and Verizon already demonstrating the technology and promising a limited service roll out as soon as this year.
The FCC's proposal to free up additional spectrum is the first step in a long process to make sure wireless operators get the airwaves they need to make these services a reality. The chairman's promise to take a hands-off approach in developing policy is a welcome signal to wireless operators that the government won't be a roadblock.
[...] Very high frequency spectrum known as millimeter waves are key to the development of 5G because these frequencies can carry large amounts of data and transfer signals with low latency -- that is, with minimal delay. But there are technical challenges in using this spectrum. Signals transmitted over very high frequencies can only travel short distances and have difficulty penetrating obstacles, which makes designing such networks tricky.
Some of the spectrum that could be used for 5G is currently used for satellite communications and for navigation services like GPS. As part of this proposal, the FCC will work with satellite providers to ensure the spectrum can be shared with wireless broadband companies that want to use it to build terrestrial 5G networks.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @07:38AM
why the hell would remote surgery be done via 5G rather than through a network cable?
if the surgeon is in a remote location, with no access to a good fiber connection, do they really have everything else that they would need? I mean... it should be some sort of scalpel for which the orientation and position in 3D space can be determined very accurately. Maybe a kinect thing and a real scalpel would work, but that would mean the doctor carries around the kinect with them all the time. The big problem with that is that the doctor actually relies on tactile feedback, and you can't get that this way.
if the patient is in a remote location, in what conditions would they be subjected to this operation? I mean... how many operations for which you need the surgeon to do it can be performed outside of a hospital? (I guess if the patient has someone with minimal medical training with them, they could be guided over the phone much more easily and the tactile feedback problem described above would be gone; this would obviously only work for stuff that can be done safely outside a hospital).
oh, and there's also the fact that the patient would need to be close to something that can be controled remotely by a surgeon, even though they're not close enough to a place with a cable network connection.
So... minor city in some 3rd world country, with no cable connection but 5G... 5G from what, since this is short range?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22 2016, @09:00AM
> Even though standards for 5G have yet to be developed, the technology is expected to enable everything from self-driving cars to
> remote surgeries done via robots to school field trips through the human body made possible by virtual reality gear.
Right, all of this stuff is possible using regular WiFi (and as parent points out, remote surgery is for wifi). Why on earth would anyone do this with a mobile phone network? Think of applications which Joe Bloggs wants to do on the bus - listening to music, watching TV. I guess current tech is not good enough for streaming HD TV?