Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Haydn and welcomed up Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says, what's the story,
Speaker 1: Morning Glory, what's the word humming bird. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about five gus it's one more. It is
Speaker 1: one more than four thing. Oh, we probably would be
Speaker 1: four G. Yeah. You know, I remember back in the
Speaker 1: old days and when I was first getting into cell
Speaker 1: phones and you don't getting into them more like like
Speaker 1: I was like getting into baseball cards. Back when I
Speaker 1: think I had my first cell phone. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about three G and and it was the heyday of
Speaker 1: three G when three G was a great thing, and
Speaker 1: had no idea what that meant. Well, you were not alone, Joe.
Speaker 1: But recently I saw an interesting This was yet another
Speaker 1: topic I came across because of something I saw in
Speaker 1: Alexis madrigals Awesome Email, his Real Future email newsletter, which
Speaker 1: if you're not subscribed to that you should. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's about five G. No, not not the newsletter
Speaker 1: the topic that we want to talk about today, right, Right,
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of ground to cover before
Speaker 1: we can get to five G, right, for four G
Speaker 1: is worth of material at least, right, Okay. So so
Speaker 1: so all of this G business um has to do well. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so g G stands for generation. Let's get that
Speaker 1: out there right at the top end. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: what generation of of stuff we're talking about has to
Speaker 1: do with at its base level, how radio frequencies are
Speaker 1: allotted for broadcast and communication. Yeah, all right, because because
Speaker 1: that is how your cell phone works. It transmits data
Speaker 1: back and forth to cellular towers via radio waves, as
Speaker 1: does a lot of other stuff, right, And and so
Speaker 1: bits of the radio spectrum are cordoned off for all
Speaker 1: of these different uses, for for television and for flight navigation,
Speaker 1: and for mobile data and for local data within your
Speaker 1: house and and etcetera, and etcetera. Uh. And of course,
Speaker 1: when organizations and governments started allocating these frequencies, no one
Speaker 1: could have predicted the crush of mobile data. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know that the demand or the supply, And no one
Speaker 1: could have predicted the speed with which technology would be
Speaker 1: developed to attempt to meet that demand. It's all been
Speaker 1: really pretty haphazard, right, so this is going to make
Speaker 1: it even weirder when we're trying to predict what the
Speaker 1: next generation is going to look like. But there is
Speaker 1: something maybe interesting to say about it. But I think
Speaker 1: before we get there, we need to do a sort
Speaker 1: of brief history of the g S and English and
Speaker 1: and Lauren to your point, I mean, keep in mind
Speaker 1: like this, this entire technology is just over a century old.
Speaker 1: I mean from the point of using radio waves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, not not cellular phones that's much younger, but
Speaker 1: the radio in general, where we've been using that for
Speaker 1: a little more than a hundred years. And obviously when
Speaker 1: it was first being used, no, there were no regulations
Speaker 1: because it hadn't been a thing before, right Yeah. Ever
Speaker 1: was just like so the regulations that came in place,
Speaker 1: they were developed in different parts of the world, so
Speaker 1: they're the allocations you will find in the United States
Speaker 1: are not necessarily the same as you would find in Europe,
Speaker 1: which may not be the same as you would find
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world. So that also makes
Speaker 1: things a little more complicated, because you know, if the
Speaker 1: whole world we're working on one standard. This story would
Speaker 1: probably be a lot easier, but that's not the way
Speaker 1: things turned out. So let's start with the first generation,
Speaker 1: the original series the Captain Kirk of the Cellular World. Um,
Speaker 1: so that first generation was an analog cellular system, not digital.
Speaker 1: This is this is one one G. Yeah, they probably
Speaker 1: didn't call it that at the time. No. No, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like you wouldn't say first annual. That's that's
Speaker 1: not that's just dumb say that. Well they shouldn't anyway,
Speaker 1: the the the unless they're of course talking about the
Speaker 1: second time they've held the event. That could be the
Speaker 1: first annual one at any rate. So one G stood
Speaker 1: for technologies including n M T C nets, amps and
Speaker 1: tax or A MPs and T A c s, which
Speaker 1: all began in the nineteen eighties. They had very limited bandwidth,
Speaker 1: so they really were only suitable for voice transmission. You
Speaker 1: did get a few, um you know, radio modem type things,
Speaker 1: but they were extremely limited in what they could do.
Speaker 1: So this was really primarily for voice train smission and
Speaker 1: that was it. Uh. These would be the old cellular
Speaker 1: phones that you would remember if you're old enough, with
Speaker 1: the big brick cellular phones, the giant ones with a
Speaker 1: huge antenna. UM. That's that's this era we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Then you get to two G. This is when we
Speaker 1: start moving into the ninety nineties, and this is where
Speaker 1: the two really big uh competing technologies came out of
Speaker 1: G S M and c d M A. UH, specifically
Speaker 1: c d M A one. There was also d AMPS
Speaker 1: at this time. But this is when we get into
Speaker 1: the first generation of digital cellular systems. So it's the
Speaker 1: second generation of cell systems overall, but the first generation
Speaker 1: of digital systems. Okay, you're saying a lot of acronyms.
Speaker 1: What are what are all these about? So tell me
Speaker 1: about amps and get some at least tell you. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you about g S M and c d M
Speaker 1: A because those are the two really important ones. G
Speaker 1: s M stands for Global System for Mobiles and c
Speaker 1: d M A stands for code division multiple access. Both
Speaker 1: of these are technologies that allow for multiple access to
Speaker 1: a tower to allow for transmission of radio signals. Very important,
Speaker 1: very basic technology that allows cell phones to work. Obviously,
Speaker 1: for a cell phone to work, you need to be
Speaker 1: able to have access a tower so that you can
Speaker 1: send your transmission to the tower to go onto the
Speaker 1: network and then receive information back from the network. And
Speaker 1: you need a methodology for handshakes. That's the time where
Speaker 1: you are going between one tower and another, like you're
Speaker 1: you're you're starting to leave one tower's transmission area while
Speaker 1: you're entering another one, and there's a handshake here, I
Speaker 1: am yeah. That allows that to continue without any interruption.
Speaker 1: So that way, if Lauren and I are talking on
Speaker 1: a cell phone and she's driving uh, and she goes
Speaker 1: past one tower to another, there's not an interruption in
Speaker 1: the conversation. So both of these technologies could do that.
Speaker 1: They were both the basics for digital cell phones. However,
Speaker 1: they're competing technologies. GS them phones won't work on a
Speaker 1: c d M A system and vice versa. You can
Speaker 1: get world phones, Like if you have a c d
Speaker 1: M A phone, you can get a world phone where
Speaker 1: it also has a G s M chip in it,
Speaker 1: but it will still primarily work on a c d
Speaker 1: M A network. Now, why the reason why I call
Speaker 1: it world phones is that most of the world, the
Speaker 1: overwhelming population of the world, relies on G s M.
Speaker 1: The United States is one of the few places that
Speaker 1: also has c d M A, So we have two
Speaker 1: major carriers that use G s M. That would be
Speaker 1: a T and T and T mobile. And then we
Speaker 1: have two major carriers, maybe three if you include UH
Speaker 1: some of the other slightly smaller but growing ones, but
Speaker 1: two major ones in Verizon and Sprint that use c
Speaker 1: d M A technology. And this is a problem obviously,
Speaker 1: because it means that if you have a C d
Speaker 1: M A phone, you are more limited in where you
Speaker 1: can take that phone and actually use it, unless again,
Speaker 1: you have a world phone. Most people in up either
Speaker 1: having a travel phone where it's a G s M
Speaker 1: M G s M phone just for travel, or you know,
Speaker 1: you can uh invest in a world phone, and maybe
Speaker 1: one day this will become moot, but for now it's
Speaker 1: still a thing. So the reason why most of the
Speaker 1: world uses G s M and stuff c d M
Speaker 1: A is that in n European government's mandated it. They
Speaker 1: said you have to use g s M and they
Speaker 1: were specifically looking at that because they considered it an
Speaker 1: industry consortium that had produced the G s M standard.
Speaker 1: In other words, it was a partnership amongst several different companies.
Speaker 1: No one company laid claim to ownership of it. UH.
Speaker 1: That was not true with C d M A, which
Speaker 1: was kind of a qual calm thing, so uh so
Speaker 1: they thought GSM better than this privately owned standard. The
Speaker 1: United States, however, looked at it as saying, hey, C
Speaker 1: d M A is allowing for faster data and voice
Speaker 1: transmission rates, clearer phone calls. You know that a better
Speaker 1: experience earlier on. And that's why in the United States
Speaker 1: you had some carriers pushing C d M A. Now
Speaker 1: G s M caught up, but it took some time.
Speaker 1: So at first C d M A was in the lead,
Speaker 1: and then the two were more or less comparable. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have a G s M phone, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to switch from one network to another. So if
Speaker 1: I have an A T and T phone and I
Speaker 1: want to switch to T Mobile, it's very easy to do.
Speaker 1: I go to T Mobile, I get a new simcard
Speaker 1: or uh and I just pop it into my my
Speaker 1: phone and it should work fine. And the other nice
Speaker 1: thing is if I want to switch phones within the
Speaker 1: same network, it's easy. So let's say I've got my
Speaker 1: Nexus four on T Mobile and I want to upgrade
Speaker 1: to a Nexus six. Then I can get the new phone,
Speaker 1: pop the simcard into my new phone, and it works
Speaker 1: right out of the box like it's it's perfect. I
Speaker 1: don't have to do anything else to it. That is,
Speaker 1: of course, assuming that the sim card is the same
Speaker 1: size for the two phones, because recently we've received a
Speaker 1: lot of new types of sim card technology where they've
Speaker 1: been getting smaller and smaller. So sometimes you still have
Speaker 1: to go to a phone like carrier store in order
Speaker 1: to get a new size, or if you have a
Speaker 1: very steady hand, you can cut one down yourself. I
Speaker 1: didn't trust myself, so I went to the store to
Speaker 1: get one, so um. The other thing about early G
Speaker 1: S M and C D M A was that C
Speaker 1: D M A could not handle simultaneous voice and data.
Speaker 1: So you might remember commercials, I think A T and
Speaker 1: T rent commercials about how specifically with the iPhone you
Speaker 1: could have both voice and data at the same time,
Speaker 1: because at one time A T and T in the
Speaker 1: United States was the only carrier that had the iPhone.
Speaker 1: It's no longer the case, but for for several years
Speaker 1: that was the case, and they said, hey, you can
Speaker 1: use both on our phone. Because it happened to be
Speaker 1: a G S M phone. They didn't, you know, it
Speaker 1: sounded like they were saying that it was unique to
Speaker 1: the iPhone. It wasn't. It was that it was the
Speaker 1: network the technology they were using allowed for it. So
Speaker 1: that is your two G. Uh. You think we would
Speaker 1: immediately go to three G. But hold up a second,
Speaker 1: because there's two point five G. This is starting to
Speaker 1: sound like seasons of the New Battlestar Galactica. It feels
Speaker 1: like that. It also it also feels like generations of
Speaker 1: the iPhone, where the number that is associated with the
Speaker 1: iPhone is not necessarily the actual generation of the iPhone.
Speaker 1: Or or Windows, like this is Windows ten. We went
Speaker 1: from Windows seven to Windows eight to Windows ten. I
Speaker 1: love Windows. Schmickery. Do when can I get cell phone emmy?
Speaker 1: All right, well let's let's go back to two point
Speaker 1: five G. So this is where we get even more confusing.
Speaker 1: All right, so we've got these two competing technologies that
Speaker 1: you know in the in the G M S and
Speaker 1: c d um ah. Now we get to g p
Speaker 1: R S and c d M A two thousand one x.
Speaker 1: These were enhanced to G networks. So here's the deal.
Speaker 1: We're not just talking about generations here. It would be
Speaker 1: so much easier if we were talking generations except for
Speaker 1: the fact that since we have a branching technology tree,
Speaker 1: you would have different generations as technology is mature at
Speaker 1: different rates. Right, So G S M would be maturing
Speaker 1: at at one and I think it's a g MS
Speaker 1: a second ago. But G s M would be maturing
Speaker 1: at one rate and C D M A would be
Speaker 1: maturing at another rate. So that would make that confusing.
Speaker 1: But to to try and make it a little more streamlined,
Speaker 1: the various international organizations have come in to say, listen,
Speaker 1: we're going to say that that generation stands for the
Speaker 1: capability of your technology, not how many iterations there have been,
Speaker 1: but there is a bare basic limit of of how
Speaker 1: much data they have to be able to accept per second,
Speaker 1: and if they meet that, that means they fall into
Speaker 1: this generation versus that generation. That's nice. Yeah, So two
Speaker 1: point five point five is two point five because it's
Speaker 1: faster than two but it doesn't quite meet the standards
Speaker 1: that were set for three G. So they had to
Speaker 1: pick where do you put them? Do you don't want
Speaker 1: to call it two G because as a carrier, you
Speaker 1: want to use this as a selling point to your customers,
Speaker 1: say our networks are faster than two G. But you
Speaker 1: can't go and say they're three G because the data
Speaker 1: rates aren't there yet. They could have just gone with
Speaker 1: like awesome too, or three to two G plus or
Speaker 1: two G plus or three G minus a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that gives us to three G, where we have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different competing standards which I'm not
Speaker 1: even gonna go into. I mean edges in there. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard about being on the edge network,
Speaker 1: that's technically a three G network. They have even faster
Speaker 1: data rates than previous generations, at about kill a bits
Speaker 1: per second. So when I say even faster, that's pretty slow, yeah,
Speaker 1: but faster than two G. So the u N International
Speaker 1: Telecommunications Union set the standard for three G at two
Speaker 1: megabets per second if the phone is stationary, and kill
Speaker 1: bits per second for a phone that's in motion. Obviously,
Speaker 1: phones that are in motion have to deal with this handshake,
Speaker 1: so that's what complicates matters. If you are stationary, you
Speaker 1: don't need to do that, and you can have a
Speaker 1: faster download rate. Okay, so we're getting closer to the
Speaker 1: present day. Yeah, when we hit four G, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, tell me the story of four G. Four
Speaker 1: G is another complicated story. Send to me sing, so
Speaker 1: I can tell you what four G is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Four G is supposed to be one gigabit per second
Speaker 1: when the phone is stationary or mobile device. It's not
Speaker 1: just a phone now, but four G you should be
Speaker 1: able to get a one gigabit per second download rate
Speaker 1: when that when the device is not in motion, and
Speaker 1: one hundred megabets per second when it is in motion. However,
Speaker 1: none of the current standards that are touted as four
Speaker 1: G meet that specification. Yeah, so they're just they're just
Speaker 1: flipping the un off all the time. Yeah, they're essentially saying, listen,
Speaker 1: we're calling this four G because it is the next
Speaker 1: generation of our technology. It works in a completely different
Speaker 1: way from three G. It uses a different methodology for
Speaker 1: handling data. It's it's using brand new technology, so we
Speaker 1: gotta call it something. We're not calling it three G
Speaker 1: plus or three point five G, so we're calling it
Speaker 1: four G. And you can take your standards and just
Speaker 1: pretend like they don't exist, because that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: That's like if Star Trek the next generation had James
Speaker 1: do Hand in the engineering room. Yeah, so we're just
Speaker 1: we're just having him. It's no reason we're not explaining it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's so so we have this four gen name
Speaker 1: that's a marketing term. It's not really they're not four
Speaker 1: G according to those UN standards, which by the way,
Speaker 1: even the U N now is like whatever, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: uh And the and the technologies that we're talking about
Speaker 1: that are called for g R U l T E,
Speaker 1: And then there's y max, and there's h s P
Speaker 1: A plus. Hsp A plus comes in a couple of
Speaker 1: different flavors of forty two. Although forty two are the
Speaker 1: ones that are considered to be closer to four G speeds,
Speaker 1: none of these get close to that one gigabit per
Speaker 1: second uh LTE tops out of around a hundred megabits
Speaker 1: per second or so. Um, you can get. The fastest
Speaker 1: speed up scene for LT is three hundred megabits per second.
Speaker 1: That was like an ideal test. Um. There is l
Speaker 1: t A l t E Advanced, which could theoretically get
Speaker 1: much faster, but that's not rolled out very widely right now.
Speaker 1: Y max is kind of dead in the water. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's no longer really a thing. Everyone's looking at l
Speaker 1: T E hsp A plus some some carriers use that.
Speaker 1: T Mobile uses that, but they also use l T E.
Speaker 1: They roll out LT networks as well, so that is
Speaker 1: kind of leading us up to today. That's where we
Speaker 1: are now, is with this mishmash of technologies. By the way,
Speaker 1: if we all by we, I mean like the carriers,
Speaker 1: if all the carriers adopted LTE, if they rolled out
Speaker 1: robust LT networks and phased out the older networks, then
Speaker 1: you could, in theory, have a phone that could work
Speaker 1: on any network as long as it was an LTE phone,
Speaker 1: because it's it's no longer this branching UH technology where
Speaker 1: you've got the G S N versus C D M A.
Speaker 1: It would all be unified in theory. In practice not
Speaker 1: gonna happen because you've got companies putting in proprietary software
Speaker 1: that is required to run in order for you to
Speaker 1: do something like make a voice call, So you can't
Speaker 1: just take the phone you have on one network and
Speaker 1: pop onto another network and not have any problems. It's
Speaker 1: it's overall advantageous I would say for humanity, um for
Speaker 1: everyone to be working within the same infrastructure. But it's
Speaker 1: it's honestly very advantageous from a business perspective to use
Speaker 1: your own proprietary to lock you in. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: sell more stuff. Yeah, yeah, I love being locked in.
Speaker 1: So it's so cozy. It's like a hobbit hole that
Speaker 1: you can't leave. When I don't have to make choices,
Speaker 1: my life is so much easier. Actually, there's some truth
Speaker 1: to that. We should talk about the science of choice sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, if you have, you know, unlimited choice,
Speaker 1: then you could be paralyzed by it. We've talked about
Speaker 1: that a couple of times on tech stuff. Yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: but so so shade aside. Um, let's let's look forward
Speaker 1: to this amazing future of five G. Okay, right, well,
Speaker 1: what inspired us to talk about this today was, again,
Speaker 1: like I said, uh, an article that I read about
Speaker 1: people predicting five G what the next generation of this
Speaker 1: wireless technology would be. So five G is not a
Speaker 1: fixed standard yet, right, it's more of a kind of
Speaker 1: an ambiguous concept. What's going on now is people are
Speaker 1: debating and talking about what five G is going to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of blue skying it. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: make certain predictions saying that these are the sort of
Speaker 1: things we would consider necessary for us to call it
Speaker 1: five G. For example, we would expect even faster UH
Speaker 1: data rates that would be that would be an expectation
Speaker 1: of the advancement of the generations of this technology. But
Speaker 1: there are other elements as well. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. Again, since since we don't have a hard
Speaker 1: and fast number, Ultimately, what might happen is the next
Speaker 1: technology that comes out, people will start calling five G
Speaker 1: and it may not come close to measuring up to
Speaker 1: some of the things that people have proposed. Right, but
Speaker 1: already there have been some like politicians and industry leaders
Speaker 1: trying to set really ambitious goals for what should be done,
Speaker 1: incredibly ambitious, like sometimes like you hear it and you think,
Speaker 1: wait what Yeah. So the topic of five G was
Speaker 1: addressed in March Mobile World Congress, and Bonnie Chop or
Speaker 1: Recode put together a good right up afterwards, including predictions
Speaker 1: made about speed, which came to the prediction was that
Speaker 1: five G would feature ideal speeds of ten gigabits per
Speaker 1: second And I just thought, w T some other letters.
Speaker 1: Are are they the generation? Are they for real? Because
Speaker 1: so the four Chop points out that the four G
Speaker 1: standard the ideal standard is one gigabit per second, but
Speaker 1: it's never actually that fast, is it. No? And what
Speaker 1: prevents it from operating at that top speed, Well, there's
Speaker 1: just the basic limitation of the systems themselves. Like I said,
Speaker 1: with LTE, the regular LT you top out in around
Speaker 1: three d megabits per second even under ideal circumstances. But
Speaker 1: what goes into that speed is a whole bunch of factors. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be the distance between you and
Speaker 1: the tower that your device is communicating with. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be um, the amount of other data that that tower
Speaker 1: is handling at the time, Um, the weather, the number
Speaker 1: of trees that are between you and the tower. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's tons of stuff like that. Now, if you are
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, lab conditions, then that's where you
Speaker 1: would probably get this ideal speed. But even in those
Speaker 1: lab conditions, no one has come close to the gigabits
Speaker 1: per second, although lt LTE Advanced has the theoretical peak
Speaker 1: performance of three gigabits per second download speed one point
Speaker 1: five gigabits per second upload speed. But as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: there are not very many ILT advanced UH networks rolled
Speaker 1: out yet, so it's we don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: real world testing in that realm. Yeah, it should have
Speaker 1: added to that list to the physical capacity, the physical
Speaker 1: technological capacity of both your device and all of the
Speaker 1: computers at the other end of the network that it's
Speaker 1: talking to you. It's of like saying that you know,
Speaker 1: if you have if you have a hallway that's ten
Speaker 1: people wide, but your doorway is only one person wide,
Speaker 1: then and you think of the doorway being your device,
Speaker 1: then your device would be the bottleneck in that case.
Speaker 1: Or or even you know, like I've got this really
Speaker 1: elegant software and a tricycle. Yeah, yeah, that that would
Speaker 1: not be helpful at home. Should have seen Laura gestu.
Speaker 1: She was pointing at the tricycle. I believe I believed
Speaker 1: there was a tricycle there. No, it's how how convincing.
Speaker 1: It was maybe ten gigabits per second, which again was
Speaker 1: the prediction here. Maybe that's not meaningful to you, So
Speaker 1: think about it like this. It is one point to
Speaker 1: five gigabytes per second, so that you could, like if
Speaker 1: you wanted to download a video game, you could download
Speaker 1: a copy of sky Room in like five seconds, or
Speaker 1: or what about like a movie, Well, so like a
Speaker 1: tin a dp HD movie and compressed format would maybe
Speaker 1: take Also, like about five seconds are less. The computer
Speaker 1: I used in college, you could download its entire hard
Speaker 1: drive in less than three seconds. And if you want
Speaker 1: another illustration of how fast this is, so ten gigabits
Speaker 1: per second. That's ten times faster than the speeds promised
Speaker 1: by Google Fiber and competing carriers. Wired connection, yeah, actual
Speaker 1: optical cable going to your house. You know often, uh,
Speaker 1: Like Lauren and I are both video gamers, so you
Speaker 1: play some video games too, So we all are aware
Speaker 1: of the idea that if you're playing an online game,
Speaker 1: it's better to have that wired connection than it is
Speaker 1: to go with wireless because you can have lag and
Speaker 1: latency and all these other issues share any time that
Speaker 1: you add that extra step of having to beam the
Speaker 1: signal from your your your actual Yeah, it's better to
Speaker 1: have that physical, dedicated line. And that's what I would
Speaker 1: think too until I hear ten gibits per second wireless transmission,
Speaker 1: because it's ten times faster than the optical fiber. I mean,
Speaker 1: that would make you wonder like, okay, so why would
Speaker 1: we even have optical fiber? What's the point of wires
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah, right, if you could actually get
Speaker 1: to uh, that that point. We'll talk about this a
Speaker 1: little bit more. I'm sure later if you can get
Speaker 1: to a point where ten gigabits per second, even even
Speaker 1: if that's the ideal and you never reached the ideal, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say it's you know, the real speed you get
Speaker 1: is four still, four times faster than fiber, is right.
Speaker 1: And even then, when you say one gigabit per second
Speaker 1: with Google Fiber that's the ideal for Google Fiber, you
Speaker 1: might you might top out at nine megabits per second.
Speaker 1: M that's not acceptable. So I'm going to get four
Speaker 1: gigabits per second over over the air. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: difference between lab conditions and real conditions. In ideal conditions,
Speaker 1: what kind of things can we do now at the
Speaker 1: top end of speaking, So with the five G technology
Speaker 1: in the lab right now, uh, the average speed tends
Speaker 1: to be around one gigabit per second, which, if you remember,
Speaker 1: is the promise speed of four G. So it feels
Speaker 1: like we're just playing catch up. But there have been
Speaker 1: some some demos of much faster speed. Samsung held a
Speaker 1: demo where they showed that they could hit seven point
Speaker 1: five gigabits per second when it was stationary, and one
Speaker 1: point two gigabits per second if the device was traveling
Speaker 1: at a speed of a hundred kilometers per hour or
Speaker 1: sixty two miles per hour. Pretty impressive. So at that speed,
Speaker 1: I mean you could you could end up being able
Speaker 1: to stream content without any problems. There's a ton of
Speaker 1: stuff that you would be able to access. And you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking a lot about mobile devices, but honestly,
Speaker 1: this technology is working its way into a lot of
Speaker 1: other platforms, including cars. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: potential uses and we'll talk a little bit about those
Speaker 1: in a little in a moment or two. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: another predicted standard of five G would be very very
Speaker 1: low latency, like one mill the second latency. And if
Speaker 1: you ask what is latency, that's just the time of
Speaker 1: delay in delivering a packet from one device to another.
Speaker 1: So a packets a piece of data. Uh, the amount
Speaker 1: of data you can transmit in a certain period of
Speaker 1: time might change, you might have more bandwidth or throughput, um,
Speaker 1: but the latency is just the time lag in delivering
Speaker 1: one packet. Uh. The other thing would be connectedness, how
Speaker 1: much can a network support, Like how many things can
Speaker 1: you wirelessly send data between at the same time? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was this was a real concern, especially earlier
Speaker 1: in cellular networks, where you would have towers that would
Speaker 1: get overwhelmed and you have by like three signals at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yea. And the old days yeah, in fact, yeah,
Speaker 1: the old old days there were you would look and
Speaker 1: you say, like, all right, this one city has a
Speaker 1: broadcast tower and it can handle like two simultaneous connections
Speaker 1: and that's it. You know. Obviously that technology has improved
Speaker 1: over time. Yeah, and that is largely a software is shue,
Speaker 1: I mean, also a memory issue. But what you're really
Speaker 1: talking about is, uh, the capacity of a computer to multitasks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially that that's what it boils down to, and that
Speaker 1: has improved significantly over time, and it would have to
Speaker 1: because we're also talking about the burgeoning era of the
Speaker 1: Internet of Things, when we're adding lots more devices to
Speaker 1: various networks. So there it's not just your cell phone
Speaker 1: or not just your computer, your tablet, it's also all
Speaker 1: the devices in your house and your car and probably
Speaker 1: a bunch of sensors outside taking data on various stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now that you could have these things connecting into
Speaker 1: their own network, which then connects to an access point. Right,
Speaker 1: so you could have essentially a traffic manager in the
Speaker 1: form of a router that would take care of some
Speaker 1: of that. But it's also potential if you have the
Speaker 1: capacity to handle billions of different devices at a time
Speaker 1: on a single tower, you could have them connecting directly
Speaker 1: to the network and not have to have a router.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you would necessarily want to do that,
Speaker 1: because you might want the router in order to do
Speaker 1: some traffic management on your end or to control access
Speaker 1: to things. Obviously, direct access to devices could pose a
Speaker 1: security risk as well. There are probably lots of considerations
Speaker 1: to take their. Another consideration for the system as a
Speaker 1: whole is going to be the management of all of
Speaker 1: those those those yeah, yeah, are really really the management
Speaker 1: of the data flow, I suppose. Yeah, So this was
Speaker 1: really interesting to me. We've talked a lot about the
Speaker 1: other other elements of five G one of the proposed ones,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind, again this is an ongoing discussion,
Speaker 1: so some of these things we're talking about may become
Speaker 1: a reality, and whatever does become five G and some
Speaker 1: of them maybe don't become a reality. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that was mentioned at a conference Ericson CEO
Speaker 1: Hans Vestberg said that the five G networks should be
Speaker 1: able to respond in real time to the various demands
Speaker 1: of devices that were on the network and be able
Speaker 1: to to to facilitate those devices so it delivers the
Speaker 1: best experience for whatever that device might be and whatever
Speaker 1: the use case might be. So, for example, if you
Speaker 1: have a mobile device in your streaming a movie and HD,
Speaker 1: you would need to have that fast download rate to
Speaker 1: accommodate that huge amount of data that's streaming to your device.
Speaker 1: So the network would accommodate you and say, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to give this data rate to that device
Speaker 1: because that's how much it needs in order to do
Speaker 1: the thing that they've asked. Let's say, though, that you
Speaker 1: have a driverless car that connects back to the network,
Speaker 1: then you want extremely low latency because safety depends upon it.
Speaker 1: You can't have a lag between uh, the detection of
Speaker 1: something like a potential obstacle and its response. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's tragic when it happens in Halo, but but
Speaker 1: it's real tragic when it happens exactly so that this
Speaker 1: would be a case where you would need to have
Speaker 1: the least amount of latency possible. It also opens up
Speaker 1: the possibility of something we've talked about before. Remember when
Speaker 1: we started talking about the early ideas of the autonomous
Speaker 1: car involved a system that cars would navigate through, and
Speaker 1: it would the cars would just be one part of
Speaker 1: the system. And how we have seen cars evolved so
Speaker 1: that they're more independent, right, they don't tend to work
Speaker 1: within a network. They're independent and they have all the
Speaker 1: systems self enclosed in the car. This is kind of
Speaker 1: shifting back to the possibility of having a big, uh
Speaker 1: interdependent system which could have benefits over a bunch of
Speaker 1: independent vehicles. Um, but we talked about that extensively in
Speaker 1: our autonomous car episode, so I'll go back over it.
Speaker 1: Or you could have even the ability for the network too.
Speaker 1: Sense when a gadget's batteries running low. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you've been using your phone all day and you're
Speaker 1: not home yet you want your phone to last a
Speaker 1: little longer, and your phone is aware that the battery
Speaker 1: is down to like, so now the network is a
Speaker 1: where that your phone's batteries down, and it starts to
Speaker 1: ping your phone less frequently to make sure that your
Speaker 1: phone is still connected. And because it's pinging it less frequently,
Speaker 1: sending it updates less frequently, your phone is just sipping
Speaker 1: at that battery power instead of gulping it down, and
Speaker 1: it extends the battery life of your device, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah. Um. Other considerations would have to include
Speaker 1: cooperation with previous networks, because part of what five G
Speaker 1: would have to do to to be successful is leave
Speaker 1: room for older devices that are only capable of connecting
Speaker 1: through three or four. Yeah. That's that's a big issue,
Speaker 1: right is you have to continue to support legacy devices
Speaker 1: that backwards compatibility issue, right yeah, because not everyone is
Speaker 1: able to. First of all, you never know when the
Speaker 1: system is going to fail and you need the backup
Speaker 1: systems there. Secondly, you never know when a system is
Speaker 1: going to get overwhelmed. Like when I go to C
Speaker 1: E S, I will often switch my phone so that
Speaker 1: it uses a three G network and doesn't even look
Speaker 1: for four G because it helps save me time and
Speaker 1: effort and frustrationttery and battery exactly. Uh. And also, not
Speaker 1: everyone can upgrade at the same time, right, Like if
Speaker 1: we all were magically given five G phones as soon
Speaker 1: as it came out. It'd be awesome, and we say, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't need these other things. But that's not the
Speaker 1: way the world works. I probably won't get a five
Speaker 1: G phone until six G comes out. You know. Another
Speaker 1: thing about this next generation generation in quotes is that
Speaker 1: people are talking about using different radio bandwidths, these high
Speaker 1: frequency bandwidths that could transmit a lot more data, right, sure,
Speaker 1: but they would also have drawbacks to write, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this the more data can only be transferred across shorter
Speaker 1: distances due to the physical properties of these particular high
Speaker 1: frequency radio waves. You would need a lot more towers
Speaker 1: and based stations and all of that and uh and
Speaker 1: better antenna technology would would have to be another development. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that that becomes sort of a a
Speaker 1: social barrier, not a technological barrier in a way, because
Speaker 1: then you've got people saying, I really don't want a
Speaker 1: cell phone tower erected in my neighborhood, right, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want that here, um or or or or
Speaker 1: even you know the possibility of of like cellular desserts
Speaker 1: the way that we have some nutritional deserts and in
Speaker 1: large areas. Yes, so you could have really underserved areas,
Speaker 1: So you might have some parts that are just swimming
Speaker 1: in gigabits and other bits where other areas where you know,
Speaker 1: you just that service just immediately drops out and until
Speaker 1: you get to another densely populated area, you don't get
Speaker 1: that service across the county line and you can't stream
Speaker 1: blue rays constantly. Well, what's what's the timeline we're looking
Speaker 1: at here? You know, we're talking a lot about the future.
Speaker 1: How far into the future are we you talking about? Well,
Speaker 1: two companies have talked about setting up temporary five gen
Speaker 1: networks as soon as twenty eighteen UM Samsung for the
Speaker 1: Winter Olympics in South Korea. And who a is that?
Speaker 1: Is that? How you say that? I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say yes because I hualei. That sounds too much like
Speaker 1: it came from Anchorman. Yes, that one for for the
Speaker 1: World Cup in Moscow the same year. Both of those
Speaker 1: goals I think are ridiculously ambitious. I mean maybe, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's really hard to say for sure how
Speaker 1: how this technology is going to develop over the next
Speaker 1: few years. Is the date that I've seen floated for
Speaker 1: commercial availability. And I know that Japan is hoping to
Speaker 1: have a permanent network available for the twenty Summer Olympics.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean, amazing things can happen. Maybe
Speaker 1: that could happen, But even if it does, I would
Speaker 1: I would guess that it's going to be a much
Speaker 1: longer period of time before five G completely overtakes the
Speaker 1: prior networks, right, And even even if they build out
Speaker 1: the network, you're still you still have to have the
Speaker 1: technology to actually take advantage of that. So I imagine
Speaker 1: that that technology will largely be limited to things like
Speaker 1: broadcast stations that happened to have the capability of having
Speaker 1: commercial level technology that can tappen, Because I mean, if
Speaker 1: it's a temporary thing that's up for the Olympics, how
Speaker 1: do they sell that to consumers? Hey, this phone is
Speaker 1: going to be really fast for like two weeks, and
Speaker 1: then it's gonna be not so fast because we're shutting
Speaker 1: down the network. Yeah, I'm sure that it's some kind
Speaker 1: of like promotional thing, uh, Sam Sung, Like, especially a
Speaker 1: creator like Samsung who also has a hardware side of
Speaker 1: the business, Um, would you know use that as a
Speaker 1: promotional opportunity to give journalists. Their fancy cell phones are
Speaker 1: five G burner phones. Yeah, yeah, I watched so much
Speaker 1: Netflix in such a short amount of time. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about how this stuff could really changed our lives.
Speaker 1: We mentioned it a little bit with the idea of
Speaker 1: this being faster than than potentially faster than than fiber connections.
Speaker 1: Potentially could be way faster than fiber connections, assuming that
Speaker 1: a statistic we read was not in fact a typo,
Speaker 1: which is so hard for me to believe. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the head of tech development project called the Innovation Center,
Speaker 1: which is out of the University of Surrey, a person
Speaker 1: by the name of him tough as Zoli. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't look up any of these things. I'm usually
Speaker 1: so good at looking picks up before I come into
Speaker 1: the studio. I apologize if I just put you your name,
Speaker 1: human person. Um I told told the BBC that he
Speaker 1: thinks that five G could lend itself to eight hundred
Speaker 1: gigabits per second. What you need to put that in
Speaker 1: a phrase that I'm going to be able to comprehend.
Speaker 1: That's like downloading thirty three HD movies per second, thirty
Speaker 1: three HD movies per second per second, or like three
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson movies. Um, and you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people like the first My first reaction to this is
Speaker 1: always like, what would I ever need with that speed?
Speaker 1: But I've said that throughout my entire life and managed
Speaker 1: to take advantage of it. And well, I said that
Speaker 1: the first time I looked at three and a quarter
Speaker 1: inch floppy does. Yeah. Well, it is one of those
Speaker 1: principles in computing is that where capability emerges, people will
Speaker 1: find ways to use it well. And with the emerging
Speaker 1: technologies of four K and eight K resolution coming out,
Speaker 1: you could easily see this being a way of getting
Speaker 1: access to that kind of content so that you get
Speaker 1: this ultra high definition experience delivered over something that doesn't
Speaker 1: have a bottleneck to it. Uh. Now, obviously four K
Speaker 1: and eight K are also going to rely very heavily
Speaker 1: on sophisticated compression algorithms because otherwise the rest of us
Speaker 1: would never be able to see it. But if you are,
Speaker 1: if you have the ability to through put eight hundred
Speaker 1: gigabits per second, action is not necessarily your your number
Speaker 1: one concern. Yeah, maybe over overtaking your data plan in
Speaker 1: like thirty seven minutes would be your major concern. You
Speaker 1: had data plans, what would they even look like? That's crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of the potential for this that
Speaker 1: one of the easiest and most obvious things to point
Speaker 1: out is the potential for streaming media, like we've been saying,
Speaker 1: you know, streaming high definition movies and stuff. One of
Speaker 1: the things I thought is how it could change what
Speaker 1: could be done with like cloud computing and cloud gaming
Speaker 1: for example. Um So, wouldn't this make cloud gaming basically
Speaker 1: unstoppable because why would you shell out for like a
Speaker 1: workhorse console like a PS four or an Xbox one
Speaker 1: or something that has strong hardware and computing power when
Speaker 1: really all you need is an internet connected display and
Speaker 1: a controller of some kind. Well yeah, especially if that
Speaker 1: if you can have a really working serve service, and
Speaker 1: we've seen services that try and take this model, succeeding
Speaker 1: to various degrees or not succeeding to various degrees. But
Speaker 1: if you had this, this ability to transmit that much
Speaker 1: data that quickly, it would remove a lot of the
Speaker 1: barriers people have seen, especially things like latency and lag.
Speaker 1: It would potentially remove those concerns so that you could
Speaker 1: have a really satisfying gaming experience without having to have
Speaker 1: that console in your home, and it sends this It
Speaker 1: creates this ability for you to have a service run
Speaker 1: where the service provider can make the investment to improve
Speaker 1: hardware as hardware advances come along. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: because of the the massive amount of revenue generated on
Speaker 1: a subscription service or even a pay to play per
Speaker 1: game service, uh, you know, it's not a concern. Whereas
Speaker 1: if I'm a PC gamer, one of the big barriers
Speaker 1: to entry is just the investment to get a good
Speaker 1: like a really good gaming rig um, and then to
Speaker 1: keep it in really good shape because knowing that in
Speaker 1: six months to a year, a lot of my equipment
Speaker 1: is going to go from good to passable, and then
Speaker 1: another six months to a year it's going to go
Speaker 1: from passible to not acceptable, which means I constantly need
Speaker 1: to be upgrading my system. This way, the all the
Speaker 1: upgrades happen on the back end, not on your console. Now,
Speaker 1: it might also mean that your subscription fee goes up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, I mean wouldn't you wouldn't you always
Speaker 1: need a system capable of parsing that gigabits per second
Speaker 1: turn into meaningful visual information. Yeah, depending on how Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would depend on how your your cloud gaming ones
Speaker 1: and runs. If you're just doing the sort of like
Speaker 1: streaming media model, I mean, they're what's happening is that
Speaker 1: the game is running entirely on the server, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's the data it's taking from you is what
Speaker 1: button you're pushing, and the data it's giving to you
Speaker 1: is visual and auditory. It's essentially as if you're watching
Speaker 1: a movie. Yeah, it just has to be. So the
Speaker 1: point you're making is is a valid one, Lauren. The
Speaker 1: device would have to be capable of accepting whatever that
Speaker 1: minimum amount of information is for that game system to
Speaker 1: work properly. Uh. And if you if you had a
Speaker 1: bottleneck there, then obviously you would have to upgrade whatever,
Speaker 1: like your smart TV or whatever it might be. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's like a little dumb set top box that connects
Speaker 1: to your TV that that just accepts the information and
Speaker 1: sends the signals to the TV. But even that would
Speaker 1: have to have the capacity to accept this massive amount
Speaker 1: of information. Yeah, like we like we were saying before,
Speaker 1: there are two sides of this, right, there's the system,
Speaker 1: the back end side, and there's the consumer side, the
Speaker 1: device and having something capable of delivering huge amounts of
Speaker 1: data and having something capable of accepting huge amount of
Speaker 1: data are two different things. Yeah, and you gotta have
Speaker 1: both of them otherwise it's a really one sided conversation. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Like my phone could download this movie in like point
Speaker 1: five seconds if it anyone would send, if anyone was
Speaker 1: sending a beautiful movie and wants to Another big implication
Speaker 1: of five G, of course, is going to be for
Speaker 1: the Internet of things, right right, And yeah, you were
Speaker 1: talking about that earlier because you know, right now a
Speaker 1: lot of people have more than one wireless device. But
Speaker 1: by if you know, your fridge and your air conditioning
Speaker 1: in your coffee pot, and your car and your stoplights
Speaker 1: and your storm drains and whatever else are all connected
Speaker 1: to the web. People are predicting that there could be
Speaker 1: fifty to a hundred billion connected devices worldwide. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've gotta have some means of being able to
Speaker 1: to facilitate that huge number of connections. Yeah. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: like we are going to need this more powerful generation
Speaker 1: of wireless connectivity if if that future is going to
Speaker 1: be possible, right Otherwise, you know, you might be cursing
Speaker 1: the fact that your neighbor's got a smart kitchen outfitted
Speaker 1: in their home because now you can't get a decent
Speaker 1: phone signal. Yeah. And and and also also, like we
Speaker 1: were talking about, those self driving cars would be of
Speaker 1: particular benefit to the system because you know, having faster
Speaker 1: and less clogged communication across the network would allow for
Speaker 1: for smoother route mapping and better traffic control and that
Speaker 1: emergency response that we were talking about earlier, where where
Speaker 1: you know, if an accident does happen, then every car
Speaker 1: on the road could be told to break, preventing a
Speaker 1: pile up. Yeah. Yeah, that These are all incredible applications
Speaker 1: of this technology or potential applications. Uh one, what one
Speaker 1: more is is remote activities. Um, so you know, imagine
Speaker 1: the best surgeon for your personal needs being able to
Speaker 1: uh not only teleconsult with you from anywhere the world,
Speaker 1: but also being able to operate a robotic surgical tool
Speaker 1: from anywhere. Yeah, definitely. I mean one of the big
Speaker 1: problems with telesurgery has been the latency problem. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There have been some examples of telesurgery that have been
Speaker 1: kind of a a scary proof of concept, you know,
Speaker 1: like people proving that this is a possible thing, but
Speaker 1: they were using very dedicated lines for a for a
Speaker 1: predetermined specific purpose. This would potentially open up the opportunity
Speaker 1: of using it on a more regular basis. Instead of
Speaker 1: it being this like we're we're proving that this is possible.
Speaker 1: This would make it practical or at least a potential
Speaker 1: practical solution to what could otherwise be a life threatening problem.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, these are all great examples of
Speaker 1: how five G could end up being a huge benefit
Speaker 1: to us, assuming that it all works out. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're still talking about something that's still in the kind
Speaker 1: of brainstorming phase. Yeah. I guess one of the main
Speaker 1: questions is just how realistic is this? I mean, we're
Speaker 1: looking at these extremely crazy optimistic predictions and uh, and personally,
Speaker 1: I don't really know what to make of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know enough about cellular and wireless
Speaker 1: technology to know what's actually plausible and what's just sort
Speaker 1: of you know, people setting ambitious goals. Well, and if
Speaker 1: you were able to actually roll this out, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's going to be a lot of investment that's
Speaker 1: going to be necessary to make this reality, where the
Speaker 1: carriers will have to invest in upgrading their infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: in other words, either building new towers or adding antenna
Speaker 1: to existing towers, whatever however that might turn out. Um,
Speaker 1: And so it's not like everyone's going to get it
Speaker 1: at the same time. It'll be like all the other
Speaker 1: networks rolled out where some some uh some networks got
Speaker 1: access to three G and four G speeds well before
Speaker 1: other ones did. So we're gonna price see that again.
Speaker 1: So that's to take some time. But once that does happen,
Speaker 1: and once five G becomes more widely adopted, Uh, the
Speaker 1: question I have is what happens to all the wired infrastructure,
Speaker 1: Like do we keep it? I mean, it makes sense
Speaker 1: to keep it as a backup anyway in case in
Speaker 1: case something happens to the wireless network. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, if you're talking about having wireless transmission rates
Speaker 1: that dwarf you know, wired rates to the point where
Speaker 1: it's it's a factor of ten or more, then you
Speaker 1: start to question why do we even have these like
Speaker 1: wires up? Should we take them down? Will it become
Speaker 1: like the wired telephone in your house where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't answer any email from the wired internet connection. We
Speaker 1: just know that's a yeah, I mean, it's it's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. I expect that we will have for a
Speaker 1: long time, will have all of these various infrastructures running concurrently,
Speaker 1: because again, not every is going to magically get upgraded
Speaker 1: and be able to take advantage of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be one of those things that
Speaker 1: if it's a transition, it will be a gradual transition.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're talking ten or twenty years down the road
Speaker 1: before enough people have gotten off the legacy systems for
Speaker 1: those to be shut down. I mean, sometimes you just
Speaker 1: have to pull the plug and you just say listen,
Speaker 1: at X date this change is going to happen. Uh,
Speaker 1: here are some programs to help you get caught up
Speaker 1: if you are left behind. But we still have to
Speaker 1: do this because, uh, it's it only makes sense for
Speaker 1: us to to concentrate on these existing infrastructures and not
Speaker 1: continue to support something that is technically obsolete. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I still be able to use all those promotional CDs
Speaker 1: I got for a O L and Prodigy back And
Speaker 1: if you had said compu Serve, I would have had
Speaker 1: good news for you, Joe. But sadly, I'm going to
Speaker 1: leave that question an answer to yes one more thing
Speaker 1: before we leave real quick though, UHH And I do
Speaker 1: want to mention that all of this also ties into
Speaker 1: the infrastructural use of air waves, of radio waves, and
Speaker 1: what the future holds for for various forms of communication
Speaker 1: will have an impact on all of these systems that
Speaker 1: we're trying to create exactly. Yeah, I mean, we have
Speaker 1: to we have to make space available for this stuff.
Speaker 1: And the question is do we take it away from
Speaker 1: something else? Do we just go with the small gaps
Speaker 1: that still exist between certain bandwidths? Uh? You know, there's
Speaker 1: certain bandwidths that that stopped being used and the FCC
Speaker 1: started auctioning them off here in the United States. Is
Speaker 1: that potentially a use for this kind of technology? Uh?
Speaker 1: There are a lot of questions that we don't have
Speaker 1: the answers to, like practical questions, and uh, and some
Speaker 1: of them are going to have some tough answers, because
Speaker 1: eventually we're going to get to a point where we said,
Speaker 1: all right, we've used all the frequencies that can we
Speaker 1: can expect to usefully deliver data. Right beyond this, we
Speaker 1: can't really either the data transmission is going to be
Speaker 1: so low or the distance is going to be so short,
Speaker 1: that's not a practical use anymore. At that point, we
Speaker 1: have to start saying, all right, why do we get
Speaker 1: rid of so that we can have this new shiny
Speaker 1: thing the that's gonna be tough. Uh So, maybe that's
Speaker 1: an excuse not to connect our toasters to the internet.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe you know, we can't let fear dictate our
Speaker 1: our pathway to the future, and gosh darn it, I
Speaker 1: want Internet connected toast all right. So, guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics that we can talk
Speaker 1: about here on forward Thinking. Maybe there's something you've always
Speaker 1: wondered about, like how is that going to work in
Speaker 1: the future, or you just have questions or comments about
Speaker 1: stuff we've said, Get in touch with us. Send us
Speaker 1: an email the addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, or you can drop us a line
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook. At Twitter and Google Plus,
Speaker 1: we are f W Thinking on Facebook US search f
Speaker 1: W Thinking. We'll pop right up, leave us a message
Speaker 1: and we'll talk to you again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this topic in the future of technology, I'll visit
Speaker 1: forward Thinking dot com. H brought to you by Toyota.
Speaker 1: Let's go places