Here's everything you need to know about 5G

India's largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel has announced to deploy a 5G capable technology, which will offer faster data speeds to consumers and improve network capacity. And Bengaluru will be among the first Indian cities to use this next-generation mobile technology.

While 3G saw a slow adoption and we quickly jumped onto 4G, thanks to Jio, uninterrupted calls and lightening fast data is still a challenge in most areas. Despite that we have taken the plunge at implementing 5G and the rollout is expected in 2020. Apart from India, countries like the US, Japan, South Korea, among others have begun implementing it. While it isn't coming until 2020, here's what you need to know about the fifth generation of technology.

What is 5G?

5G is the term coined to describe the next-generation of mobile networks beyond the currently available 4G LTE mobile networks. As you know, every few years, there has been an upgrade in the mobile network technology. While 2G was slow at data speed up to 64kbps, 2.5G allowed web browsing and sending/receiving emails at a speed of 64kbps - 144 kbps, and then came 3G that increased the speed to up to 144kbps - 2Mbps. 3G allowed sending larger emails, faster communication, streaming and video conferencing.

The next was 4G that brought in 100Mbps to 1Gbps Internet speed. Now 5G claims that the speed will be 10 times faster than 4G. The minimum speed is expected to be 1Gbps. So, it promises blazing speeds and downloads of larger files, for instance a movie, in seconds.

In years to come, the dependency on digital is bound to increase, and so will the need for faster data speeds.

Official standard for 5G

Right now there is no official standard for 5G. In fact, the Indian government, which missed on participating when standards for 3G and 4G were set, want to ensure that the case isn't the same when it comes to 5G. In fact, the govt has reportedly set aside a corpus of Rs 500 crore for research and development in 5G.

Which devices support 5G

There no devices supporting 5G, but companies like Qualcomm will begin testing chips for phones that will support the next gen of data speeds. So, it's a long way to go until OEMs start building 5G capable phones. It is possible only after significant rollout of the 5G network.