Question for all you 5G experts. Is it true that Israel will only be having a fibre optic version despite being involved in the development?
5G is NOT delivered over fibre optic, per se, fibre is only a small part of a 5G network; as it is of any other current mobile phone network, I'll try and explain.
Where the fibre optic comes in is that the fibre is the high speed, high bandwidth backhaul connection from the masts to the mobile operators core network. As 5G transmission is at very low power and travels less well than previous Generations it requires more masts/transmitters to fill in the 'not spots', gaps in the coverage, therefore a need for more fibre optic cables for the backhauls in certain places.
In old wired technology parlance if you think of the cable from the telephone pole to the exchange that carries all the circuits connected to that pole then that cable is that pole's 'backhaul'. The dropwire that goes from the pole to your house and to your landline phone is the equivalent to the wireless connection between your mobile and the local mast.
Your mobile phone is basically a radio transceiver capable of transmitting and receiving voice and data. The clever bit about mobile technology is that a call or data transmission can switch seamlessly between cells as you move around.
5G is the wireless coding and protocol for transmitting from the mast to the handset/device. Just as 4G and 3G are now.
As 2G transmission speed was quicker than GSM, and 3G quicker than 2G, and 4G was quicker than 3G, so 5G will be quicker than 4G.
Each Generation (G) has got cleverer and cleverer at squeezing quarts into pint pots, radio spectrum bandwidth is very expensive there is only a finite amount, a bit like land, you can't make any more of it; you may remember the bidding auctions for the mobile phone bands some years back and the eye watering sums that were paid, and the Government were happy to pocket for the operating licences.
A short while ago you may remember that everybody had to migrate from UHF TV to Digital Freeview and even more recently some retuning of Freeview was needed, that was so the radio spectrum they used could be sold off with new operating licences. That round of auctions for three bands in the spectrum in 2018 raised in excess of £1.3bn for HMG, the original auction for 3G spectrum raised £22.5bn in 2000 ,serious money for thin air!
In the Southend area Virgin are laying some more fibre, I believe that is for their network improvement rather than 5G backhaul, they don't do an awful lot of backhaul stuff.
The other operator you will see laying fibre is City Fibre who are providing a Fibre To The Home (FTTH) network for high speed broadband across Southend where the fibre comes right into your home not to a local street cabinet and then copper to your house, Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC). This will be an up to 1Gb service.
The advantage of FTTH over FTTC is that services over FTTH are the same upload speed as they are down, full duplex working, a great boon for gamers and video-conferencing.
Some of you will currently be video-conferencing from home and you will notice some people on the call will appear to move slowly or freeze momentarily, that is because their upload speed of their video can only be as quick as their broadband upload speed which is always far slower than the download speed. It's OK watching HD download quality but when you've only got black and white 405 line quality upload...
Also on FTTH the suppliers can virtually guarantee that the speed they sell you is what you will get, FTTC always has an attenuation caused by the physics of copper cable, that's why everyone gets a different speed.
Hope that helps explain a bit.
