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18 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2018 allow for far more efficient traffic flow, im- prove self-driving vehicle deployment, and al- low for more intelligent route mapping—and in general make travel safer. Mix in the capa- bilities of 5G with virtual/mixed reality and the disruptions (good disruption in this case) are beyond the imagination of many. Surgeons will be able to perform surgery from anywhere there is a 5G connection, military command- ers will be able to control their assets from any location, and on and on. Let your imagination run wild and wait 10 years and it will probably happen (Figure 8). There are challenges, however. To accom- plish all that, 5G will need to travel over su- per-high-frequency airwaves. Higher frequen- cies enable faster speeds and bandwidth. But they can't penetrate walls or windows, etc., like lower frequency waves can. Also, higher frequency transmissions weaken over long dis- tances to a far greater degree. That means wire- less companies will need to install thousands— perhaps millions—of miniature cell towers on top of every lamp post, on the side of buildings, inside every home and potentially in almost ev- ery room. Because of that, for the foreseeable future, 5G will comple- ment 4G rather than out- right replace it. In build- ings and in crowded ar- eas, 5G will provide a speed boost. But when you're driving down the highway, 4G could be your only option—at least for a while. There- fore, the next generation of devices may be hybrid 4G/5G. The research and de- velopment alone are costly and building out 5G networks will be wildly expensive—even for an industry accustomed to spending many billions of dollars on infrastructure costs. Ac- cording to Barclays, rolling out 5G to the en- tire United States will cost $300 billion. One thing to consider is that if you want a new smartphone after 2018 you just may want to wait and stay up-to-date on what is to soon be available. Just as with virtual reality, 3D printing, auton- omous transportation, and other potentially dis- ruptive technologies, you can be sure that we will continue to cover the progress of 5G, one of a number of approaching megatrends. PCB007 Dan Feinberg is the owner and president of FeinLine Associates Inc. and the technology editor for I-Connect007. To read past columns or to contact Feinberg, click here. Figure 8: Advantages of 5G.