EDGEDAVAO
BASTE FINDS VICE MAYOR DUTIES LIFE-CHANGING
Serving a seamless society
VOL.12 ISSUE 90 • SUNDAY-MONDAY, JULY 14-15, 2019
f
@EdgeDavao
www.edgedavao.net
SPECIAL REPORT
5G: FAST OR FEROCIOUS? By NEILWIN JOSEPH BRAVO
87
-year old retired Davao City teacher Jose�ina received a pass-it-on video on messenger and didn’t quite understood what the two-charactered term meant. She forwarded the message to her son who was riding his bike somewhere thousands of miles away across the world. The intriguing characters read “5G” and more intriguing is the message of health risks that the video warns concerning it. And for an octogenarian like Jose�ina, ageing certainly has a lot of drawbacks not only from creaky joints to memory loss, to the confusing taxonomy of technology. The terms modern technology is designated these days are as Greek as they can be. But that’s not the point, even octogenarians are very much into social media and internet and thanks to the wonders of technology, communicating from one side of the globe to another is as fast as it can get. It may even be faster in the next few months with this thing called 5G. Internet used to be at snail speed in this part of the Philippines and buffering over video messages could be as long as summer’s day. Things have gone better but maybe not quite. Internet speeds have improved dramatical-
ly albeit still erratic in areas around Davao. Yes, there is a lot of hype around 5G at the moment. But what it really is, and what it brings to people’s daily lives is as complex as its nomenclature. You don’t expect an octogenarian or to their extreme counterparts--those techie millennials--to understand what 5G means off the bat and break it down in technological terms. One thing sure, it’s turning heads in almost the same fashion as it turns up megabits per second. Yes, 5G may be the next biggest thing since sliced bread but even across the world, like Australia where Jose�ina’s son now lives, concerns over 5G is making the rounds not just in social media but also in public parks where protests have been staged. “There is a lot of misconception,” Jose�ina relayed his son’s answer. Indeed, despite 3G’s enor-
A cellular base station towers over a commercial area along Quimpo Blvd. in Davao City on Saturday. Lean Daval Jr
mous promise, there is a cloud of misconception that came with its entry into the country. What does 5G mean? 5G, or �ifth generation, mobile internet is the next advancement in telecoms technology. It promises to provide much faster data download and uploading speed. It should also be able to offer wider coverage and more stable connectivity. How fast is 5G compared to LTE or 4G? According to tests, 5G should be capable of data transfer rates of up to 10 Gigabit/s as compared to LTE, or Long Term Evolution which is a 4th Gen mobile comms standard and offers data rates of around 100 Megabits/s. That’s a few orders of magnitude difference. In other words, it will be very fast indeed. In June this year, the Philippines became the �irst country in Southeast Asia to experience commercial �ifth-generation (5G) �ixed wireless broadband after telecom giant Globe launched 5G postpaid plans for home. “The arrival of 5G has caused excitement in the global world of telecommunications. Today, we
5G, P9
►NEWS P3 edgedavao@gmail.com
P 15.00 • 16 PAGES