mmWave – What ‘exactly’ is it?

Low band spectrum, high band spectrum and mmWave – what’s the difference and how is it going to make my life easier?

It’s been a couple of years since 5G was first switched on in Australia and buzz words for this next generation technology are aplenty. It can be overwhelming trying to decipher what it all means and more importantly, what it all does, so I’ll start by breaking down mmWave, the latest 5G technology that we have deployed.

mmWave is a technology that is tipped to be critical in delivering a major technological leap forward across the globe. This is thanks to its ability to deliver enormous amounts of data quickly. We are all more connected than ever, becoming increasingly digitally reliant which then amplifies demand on the network from these data-intensive applications – and this is where mmWave comes in.

You can think of it in terms of a motorway. Let’s say 4G is a six-lane motorway with data travelling back and forth at speed. The speed and capacity of mmWave takes this from a six-lane freeway loaded with BMWs to a hundred lane mega-freeway with free-flowing, speed limit free F1 cars.

Whether you are primarily a mobile user or a large sophisticated and fully connected industrial organisation you’re going to get massive gains in speed and bandwidth with mmWave. 

And when we talk about mmWave speed it’s fast – very fast. Recent testing on our mmWave network has delivered speeds of 4.5Gbps. But how much speed do we really need? Well, that really depends on how you intend to harness the power of 5G mmWave.

If you’re a ‘handset first’ mmWave user then these speeds will provide a much richer user experience. Think holograms instead of FaceTime or an augmented reality shopping experience over standard web browsing. For enterprise this significant increase in speed will pave the way for the delivery of technologies such as remote security and surveillance.

One of the other key attributes of mmWave is capacity and its ability to connect thousands of devices simultaneously. This is going to be a gamechanger for large scale events like concerts and stadium sporting events with huge crowds all streaming and uploading content at the same time. The impact of mmWave’s significant capacity will also come into the spotlight in locations like shopping centres and airports where we see large volumes of people gathering under the same roof and all connecting to the same tower, thanks to the high bandwidth of mmWave all these users will benefit from seamless connectivity. 

And what about the latency of mmWave? In simple terms, latency refers to the time it takes for data to transfer from point a to point b - or the delay between when you take an action and when you see the result – like flicking on a light switch. The lower the latency, the faster the data transfers. This is important for several reasons.

For technology to take the next great leap, the kind we have all heard about but have not yet truly seen, we need to be certain that the technological infrastructure is in place to support it.

Think about driverless cars, there is simply no room for error here. If a car is driving autonomously, at speed, then it is critical that information on the car’s surroundings is actioned in real-time.

And for this you need the lowest latency possible – which is where mmWave starts to come in. The average latency on a standard 4G network today is around 50milliseconds (ms). For 5G non-standalone this reduces dramatically at an average of 21ms, but mmWave 5G has the potential to reduce this even further to single digit ms, once connected to the 5G standalone core alongside Edge Computing, which we are already testing before launching in the not too distant future.

Once available, this ultra-reliable low latency will be critical in enabling real-time response to rapidly changing data and will pave the way for a wealth of new use cases, particularly across the enterprise sector.  This includes areas such as industrial automation, intelligent transport systems to improve traffic flow and even telemedicine.

So, when is all of this going to be a reality? At Optus we have been testing mmWave for the last 12 months so that we can connect our customers with technology that improves their lives. We’ve been actively pushing mmWave to its limits so we can get a true grasp of what it is capable of delivering. Just last month we switched on our first six mmWave sites, the first of many to join our network over the coming months. This is an exciting milestone for Optus as we continue to push hard to deliver a world class network and Australia’s fastest 5G.

While we continue to roll out mmWave across our existing 5G sites the device eco-system needed to support it such as mobile handsets and modems is also starting to take shape. It will still be some months before mmWave capable devices are mainstream but when they arrive you had better believe that we will be ready. 

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