How Mobile Data Works – From 1G to 5G (We’ve Come A LONG WAY…)

From 1G in the 1980s to INSANELY fast 5G in 2019, mobile data has changed massively over the past few decades. Here, we take an in-depth look at how mobile data has evolved since the dawn of the smartphone…

What Is Mobile Data? The Basics (In Layman’s Terms)

Mobile data lets you connect to the internet when you’re away from your home WiFi network. Mobile networks are powered by cell towers; these towers are dotted around the country and are collectively known as a “cell” – they power your phone, both for calls and internet connectivity.

These cell towers – often referred to as base stations – are IP-based (Internet Protocol) networks, meaning they use standard communication protocols to send and receive data in packets.

The cell tower is a conduit, essentially, and your phone is the source.

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In its simplest form, these base stations are radio systems. They “broadcast” data – both voice and data on 4G LTE – to handsets inside their vicinity. This is why it is important for networks to have towers all over the country, as individual towers only have a certain range.

For instance, say you start your day in New York. When you leave your apartment, you’ll connect to a local base station. You then get in your car and drive to Chicago. During your drive across state lines, you’ll move through several or more base station zones, potentially, swapping from one to the next so as to ensure your phone is constantly connected to the web.

And that’s it, basically. I mean, you can get super-complicated if you like – there are plenty of engineering sites that go into way more depth. But for a layman’s overview of how mobile data works, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell!

Mobile Data is Now More Important Than Call Functionality…

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What Is Mobile Data? The Basics (In Layman’s Terms) Mobile data lets you connect to the internet when you’re away from your home WiFi network. Mobile networks are powered by cell towers; these towers are dotted around the country and are collectively known as a “cell” – they power your phone, both for calls and internet connectivity. These cell towers – often referred to as base stations – are IP-based (Internet Protocol) networks, meaning they use standard communication protocols to send and receive data in packets. The cell tower is a conduit, essentially, and your phone is the source.   In its simplest form, these base stations are radio systems. They “broadcast” data – both voice and data on 4G LTE – to handsets inside their vicinity. This is why it is important for networks to have towers all over the country, as individual towers only have a certain range. For instance, say you start your day in New York. When you leave your apartment, you’ll connect to a local base station. You then get in your car and drive to Chicago. During your drive across state lines, you’ll move through several or more base station zones, potentially, swapping from one to the next so as to ensure your phone is constantly connected to the web. And that’s it, basically. I mean, you can get super-complicated if you like – there are plenty of engineering sites that go into way more depth. But for a layman’s overview of how mobile data works, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell! Mobile Data is Now More Important Than Call Functionality… Mobile data is important too. You need it to use your phone when you're in a city, on the road, or traveling. In fact, there is 33 times more demand for mobile data than there is for calls, meaning people surf the web more than they talk these days. And that figure is constantly increasing. This is why we now have 4G and 5G networks; older 2G and 3G networks were crumbling under the demands placed on them by millions of people attempting to access the internet at the same time. This is why HSPA and HSPA+ happened. And then 4G LTE. It’s a constant evolution to tackle the ever-increasing demand for mobile data. Networks and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are constantly updating their infrastructure to make it more efficient and faster. This costs millions of dollars and is a never-ending process, as the goalposts keep moving – like with the advent of 5G. Most phones now run on LTE (4G), but from about 2022, 5G will take over, bringing with it huge uplifts to download speeds. Different Types of Mobile Data – 1G to 5G To understand how we get got to where we are, you have to understand how the industry, as well as consumer habits, have changed over the years. Back in the early-2000s, demand for mobile data was small. By 2010, it was enormous, following the release of the first true smartphones – Apple’s iPhone and Google’s first run on Android phones. Prior to this, we had WAP internet – an incredibly slow form of mobile data that anyone over the age of 30 will remember. Fancy new phones like the iPhone and Google’s first run of Android-powered devices caused a change in the way we use mobile devices. For the first time, data became more important that call and texts, a first since the dawn of mobile comms in the 1970s. The Evolution of Mobile Data (1G to 5G) 1G & 2G – 1G isn’t actually the correct term to use here; it was never known as that. But it works for our needs in this post. Launched in the 1980s, 1G allowed for calls to be made over networks. It was simple, but so were phones, so it was THE standard up until 2003, when 2G happened, bringing with it GSM, GPRS and EDGE – a means of sending data and calls over the same network. Speeds were appalling, however (30-110 kbps) 3G – 3G was the first BIG evolution of mobile networks, as it allowed for faster data delivery (2mbps) with support for calls, texts, email, and the internet inside a single packet. 3G was a direct response to the rise of smartphones and represents the first time we actually got a fit-for-purpose mobile internet. Without 3G, none of the things you do today on your phone would be possible. 4G – Building on from 3G, 4G introduced even faster mobile data speeds – up to 100mbps. Based on standards outline by the International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced), 4G was complex to integrate into existing networks. This is why it took a while to get going. LTE came shortly after and was designed to simplify network architecture for the express purpose of rolling out faster and faster internet speeds. 5G – LTE (Long Term Evolution) eventually gave birth to 5G, bringing us up to the present day. 5G is here now, but it isn’t true 5G. True 5G will deliver speeds of 10gbps! The current standard is around 1Gbps, so we have quite a ways to go before we’re topping out at the sharp-end of 5G’s evolution. The framework, however, is in place. By 2025, most users in the western world will likely be experiencing mobile data speeds in and around 10gbps. Why We Use Mobile Data Remember that fact from earlier? The one that said demand for

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