As with the beginning of each year, 2015 is certainly no exception in that cellular and wireless communications experts are thinking about what the future might hold. One specific topic that is on the minds of many industry experts is that of 5G being “the next big thing in wireless.”

Being the successor to LTE or 4G, 5G is expected to provide greater network capacity and speed to support the potentially billions of devices that are associated with a connected future – ranging from smart phones to driverless vehicles. However, 5G-related industry standards have not been defined yet and numerous questions require answers before deployment starts.

As a result of very little open spectrum with large contiguous bands being available, 5G will have to operate in higher frequency ranges to realize its full potential. At this stage though, the cellular industry is only expected to reach a decision in this regard within the next year or two.

In the next decade, the demand for data capacity is expected to rise exponentially. However, with the increase in capacity that can be provided by means of additional small cell sites, many more devices will be able to be supported without experiencing a lag in network speed. While there is concern surrounding the cost of deploying so many new small cell sites, the benefit of providing additional bandwidth to users at faster speeds makes the cost worthwhile.

With Japan taking the lead in previous network technology rollouts in conjunction with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to take place in a few years’ time, the event will provide an ideal opportunity to debut 5G technology. It has been speculated that numerous vendors and operators are already working on having the 5G technology ready to be launched by then.

5G will also be extremely beneficial at large events such as the Olympics because it will supply the capacity that is required to support such a large amount of network users, which is currently close to impossible for existing 3G and 4G networks to cope with. This will enable the Tokyo Olympics to be shown all over the world in a way that has not been possible until now, with users inside the stadium being able to use smart devices to interact with the event.

Although it’s still quite early on in the 5G-hype cycle, a large number of groups are taking a closer look at it and quite a few parts of the technology have yet to be defined. While standardization is currently completely absent from the whole 5G equation, it will be available virtually everywhere within the next 10 years at most.