Looking at the latest pace of development of technological innovations, it is easy to forget that only for several years we have been able, for example, to watch streamed materials in 4K resolution using home networks.

Earlier this was not possible due to the low speed of the Internet, and what's more, the suppliers were afraid that customers are not interested in this option at all - now it is hard to believe, because a large part of us can not imagine a different quality, and we watch 4K materials, e.g. on Netflix, using home wireless networks. And now we are on the threshold of another revolution, because Ericsson has just announced that its latest 5G hardware is able to send a full hour of 4K stream in just 14 seconds.

It is true that we were supposed to learn more about this, as every year, during the MWC mobile electronics fair in Barcelona, but as we know the event was canceled due to the raging coronavirus in the world. However, this does not change the fact that Ericsson set another record, because its engineers in Stockholm Kista achieved a download speed of 4.3 Gbps, thus beating Huawei's October achievement, which boasted 3.67 Gbps and approaching the theoretical maximum of current 5G chips, i.e. 7.5 Gbps.

It is worth emphasizing here, however, that in real applications it will be easier for users to achieve results closer to that of Huawei and not only because we are talking about lower speed. For this purpose, Ericsson aggregated 8 millimeter wave bands (mmWave), thus reaching the 800 Mhz range, while the Chinese used a 100 MHz C band channel, which will be accessed by far more service providers and the already operating Swiss network. Therefore, although Ericsson used a smartphone with Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 5G modem and commercially available components for testing, it will probably not be possible to repeat its result.

Of course, this does not diminish the achievement of Ericsson in any way, because it shows the capabilities of the 5G network, but it should be remembered that in real conditions there will be many obstacles to overcome. We should enjoy the fact of increasing the maximum download speed, because it means only advantages for us - in addition to the already mentioned 4K streaming, which will cease to be a problem, a big performance jump should also include mixed reality and multiplayer struggles in games, not to mention about streaming game services like mushrooms after the rain, such as Google Stadia or Nvidia GeForce NOW.

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