The next generation mobile network, called 5G (or fifth generation), is still many years from becoming a reality, but Qualcomm wants to make sure it's out ahead of the competition.
On Monday, the San Diego-based mobile chip giant announced it will be launching the world's first 5G modem, called the Snapdragon X50. The chip could theoretically support download speeds on your smartphone of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's ridiculously fast. The average 4G download speed in the United States is 9.9 megabits per second (short of the global average of 13.5 Mbps), according to study from OpenSignal published earlier this year.
Once cellular networks start offering phones access to gigabit-level download speeds, these devices will start evolving in interesting way. They may, for example, be able to access data in the cloud more quickly than retrieving data from the device's flash storage.
"At those speeds, it completely transforms what happens on a mobile device," said Sherif Hanna, a manager of technical marketing at Qualcomm.
Qualcomm said it will start sending samples to customers in the second half of 2017, and phones with the modem inside will begin shipping in early 2018.
But even with a date as early as 2018, don't expect to get access to 5 Gbps download speeds on your phone any time soon. Getting 5G infrastructure off the ground will be a challenge for mobile network operators. Qualcomm's 5G modem will run on the millimeter wave spectrum in the 28GHz band. Millimeter waves don't transmit over long distances and can't even penetrate walls. Instead of building huge cell towers for beaming signals far and wide, network operators will have to start installing many so-called "small cells" base station throughout areas for 5G coverage.
South Korean carrier KT said it will be the first to launch a 5G network for the country's 2018 Winter Olympics.
But the LTE network could also improve quite a bit too in that time. Qualcomm also announced on Monday that will be launching the world's first gigabit speed device for an LTE network. Working with Australian telecom Telstra, Netgear will launch a hotspot equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X16 LTE modem. The LTE hotspot will provide users with download speeds of up to 1 Gbps.
With this 5G announcement, Qualcomm is trying to rush out ahead of competitors like Intel to demonstrate it still has the world's best modem technology. Qualcomm's modem chip business was hit recently when Intel won some modem business from Apple. In the latest iPhone 7, Apple is now dual sourcing the LTE modem chip from both chip providers. For Intel, who has mostly sat on the sidelines of the smartphone revolution, it was a monumental and long-sought victory.
The problem for Qualcomm right now is that there's not enough differentiating the company's modem technology -- at least not enough for Apple to not dual source its LTE modems. Advancements in LTE radio technology have somewhat plateaued, and now everyone is looking for the next big leap.
Now Intel is of course trying to prepare for 5G too. The company is active in 5G standardization efforts with 3GPP, an international telecom association. The company has also been prototyping and testing 5G modem architecture.
