A Peek at Our Wireless Future

Qualcomm has spent nearly US$50B — yes billion — advancing its wireless initiatives. Its current leading efforts are 5G, WiFi 6, and Millimeter Wave. In general, 5G is for when you are on the road, WiFi 6 is for when you are in a building, and Millimeter Wave is for tight in-building or line of-sight outside solutions.

You’ll likely have access to all three technologies, and where one leaves off and another picks up isn’t important. What is important is that the collection of these technologies means you can connect pretty much everything to your various networks and get wireless performance that rivals wired speeds.

Loading improves as well. Capacity can crater individual performance today. Once these technologies are in place, overall network limits will remain, but individual users should see much more linear scaling. In short, even in a stadium or conference, you’ll be able to communicate, browse the Web, and even watch videos. Today you are often lucky to get data at all, let alone enough for full function.