Samsung makes breakthrough in 5G technology but doesn’t expect commercialization until 2020

The good news: Samsung has made a breakthrough that inches us closer to having 5G mobile broadband technology at our fingertips. The bad news: it likely won’t be available to the public until around 2020.

According to their Samsung Tomorrow blog:

Samsung Electronics announced that it has successfully developed the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. The new technology sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks.

You read that right, “several hundred times faster than current 4G networks.”

“The millimeter-wave band is the most effective solution to recent surges in wireless internet usage,” said ChangYeong Kim, Executive VP and Head of Digital Media and Communications R&D Center. “Samsung’s recent success in developing the adaptive array transceiver technology has brought us one step closer to the commercialization of 5G mobile communications in the millimeter-wave bands.”

Hopefully data plans will have evolved by then to the point that we won’t be paying so much for overages. If not, one might blow their monthly allocation in seconds.