5G aimed for a 10× higher peak bitrate, 10× lower latency, and 100× more traffic capacity than 4G — standardised by 3GPP starting with Release 15 (frozen June 2019), after first appearing mid-2018.

The three goals "at a glance":

• 10× increase in peak bitrate
• 10× reduction in latency
• 100× increase in traffic capacity vs. 4G

Standardisation timeline:

• Mid-2018: 5G appears (3GPP Release 15)
• Release 15 (the first 5G spec): planned for end 2018, actually frozen 2019-06-07 — the "general build for mobile internet"
• Release 16: planned March 2020, postponed to end 2020 — added IoT (machine-to-machine) and ultra-low latency

Headline figures often quoted: data rates up to a theoretical 20 Gbit/s, latency from a few ms down to < 1 ms, and the ability to address ~100 billion devices worldwide.

Tip: Remember the "10/10/100" rule of thumb — 10× speed, 10× lower latency, 100× capacity. It captures 5G's ambition in one line. And note 5G NR is not backwards-compatible with 4G — it's a genuinely new radio interface.

Go deeper:

• 5G (Wikipedia) — the full picture: goals, spectrum, release timeline, and how the headline figures map to real deployments.
• Switzerland's first end-to-end 5G data connection (Swisscom) — the real-world milestone that opened this lecture's 5G story: a concrete "what 5G actually does" anchor for the headline goals.

FR1 spans 450 MHz–6 GHz (sub-6) and FR2 spans 24–52 GHz (millimetre wave). Higher frequencies (FR2/mmWave) give much higher data rates but over much shorter distances — there is a negative relationship between frequency and range.

The two ranges:

The core physics — frequency vs. range trade-off:

The higher the frequency, the shorter the range.

mmWave (radio frequencies roughly 30–300 GHz) promises incomparably better transmission speeds, but suffers high attenuation — the signal loses strength quickly when absorbed by air or moisture. This is why 5G distinguishes low (600–850 MHz), mid (2.5–3.7 GHz), and high (25–39 GHz) spectrum, each with different characteristics: higher bands give better speed at the cost of coverage.

The deployment consequence: mmWave needs pico-cells (cell diameter 10–100 m) and therefore a massive, dense roll-out of new base stations — you can't cover a country with mmWave the way you can with sub-6.

Tip: FR1 = "reach," FR2 = "speed." The whole small-cell story below is a direct consequence of choosing mmWave for the high-speed band.

Go deeper:

• 5G mmWave: Millimetre Wave (Electronics Notes) — why FR2 signals don't pass through walls, drop to ~200–300 m outdoors, and need beamforming — the propagation physics behind the FR1/FR2 split.
• An Introduction to the 5G Frequency Spectrum (Knowles) — a clear FR1-vs-FR2 breakdown with the actual sub-6 GHz and mmWave band numbers and the speed-vs-coverage trade-off charted out.