If youre interested in faster download speeds on your smartphone - and arent we all? - then youll want to know about the latest field tests of 5G technology being carried out in Japan.
The new trial carried out by Huawei and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo is the first to use conditions that match the real world: in other words, a lot of users connecting at once on a spectrum compatible with todays handsets.
The good news is that the engineers managed a peak data transfer speed of 3.6Gbps - not too shabby when you think that 4G maxes out at about 20Mbps. Those kind of speeds could transform our smart cars, our smart cities and just about every other aspect of 21st century life.
Five years time
"As the first in the world to succeed with such a large multi-user environment test, this is an important milestone," said NTT DoCoMos Takehiro Nakamura. "This is very encouraging as the industry works to commercialize 5G by 2020... I look forward to even more impressive results when we move to the next phase of [the] field trial in Japan."
Further tests are expected to take place at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, while the UK government has promised that Londoners are going to be enjoying 5G speeds within the next five years.
Theres a lot of work still to do but the signs are promising. 5G has a theoretical top speed of 20Gbps, but away from laboratories and specialised equipment the actual speed you get on your 2020 flagship smartphone will be lower than that.
