5G is a moving target. It starts with materially larger spectrum bands than are the norm today, think 2x200 vs. 2x20 today. This amount of spectrum simply isn't available in traditional bands but is available in higher bands such as 28GHz, 37GHz, 39GHz or higher. The reason why these bands remain widely available for new services deployment is that they?ve been historically tough to monetize. Issue #1 is very low propagation which requires massive fiber density.
As important as the fiber reach is, new antenna technology (beam forming/tracking) which creates pencils of concentrated RF spectrum that are constantly forming and reforming to create the optimal path to the target receiver is equally significant. This technology is nascent but deployable today in pre-standard, pre-commercial form. Another technology, massive MIMO (multiple in/multiple out) receivers, is in the lab now which, when commercialized, will materially advance mobility, speed and latency. Piece these four basic elements together and marry them to an evolved LTE fall-back using LTE-U (unlicensed) and 3.5GHz shared spectrum, and that is the 5G vision for the future.
