After over a decade, a new mobile communication standard has arrived and is ready to usher in a new era of digital connectivity. 5G is the buzzword everywhere and countries around the world are deploying 5G as quickly as possible. India, which is the latest to auction the 5G spectrum, the telecom operators are all set to launch their 5G services which include Airtel 5G, Jio 5G and Vi 5G. In the US, 5G is already live with telecom companies such as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon offering their 5G services. If you are still not aware of 5G, you can learn about all the developments from this explainer. With that said, let's move on and learn what is 5G and what are its advantages over 4G.

Here we have explained everything about 5G including the new frequency bands, its practical speed, SA and NSA modes in 5G, advantages of 5G over 4G and more. You can expand the table below and move to any section you want.

5G, as the name suggests, is a fifth-generation mobile network standard, a successor to 4G-LTE. Technically, 5G corresponds to a set of technical specifications defined by 3GPP – an industry consortium that develops standards for mobile communications. Similar to how 4G provided better speed, latency and wider capacity over 3G, 5G ushers in a new era of ultra-fast gigabit networking where devices from IoT to large machines – all can benefit from its sheer power.

In 2017, 3GPP approved the first 5G specifications called Release 15. It estimated 5G peak speeds from 10 to 20 Gbps. By comparison, the theoretical peak speed of 4G is 1 Gbps. So 5G offers multiple improvements over 4G-LTE. The reason 5G can deliver such a high-speed network is that higher frequency bands (called NR — New Radio) have finally been opened up for public and commercial use.