We might as well drop the whole ?G classification. Since the US carriers started branding stuff 4G that wasn't anywhere close to spec its been a free for all.<p>Marketing aside, the tech might have merit in its own right though. I think the Ka band isn't available for use in my country though...
I thought 28 GHz signals would be stopped by relatively small obstacles (thin walls). It's not a matter of detection; the signal is absorbed and there is none left to detect on the other side. How could they overcome this with an antenna array?<p>Edit: According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_band</a> this band is used for satellite communications, but it very susceptible to attenuation in rain. So it's very cool that a new antenna tech could improve on satellite downlinks, but it still doesn't seem practical for a cell phone.
All these faster speeds won't do anything really for heavily populated areas. The most important thing is total available bandwidth (bytes/sec/hz), and it's unclear how better that will get. LTE itself doesn't improve a lot over 3G techniques, the thing that's making LTE faster in saturated conditions right now is that there's just more bandwidth compared to 3G.
> "In my opinion 4G achieves a decent speed and what we need to do is crack the capacity crunch we are facing."<p>Translation: "The theoretical numbers we sold LTE with are a good target, maybe this technology lets us deliver that in the real world to all the users who want it."<p>From what I can tell, this technology isn't about making spectrum more efficient, but opening up new parts of the spectrum (10+GHz) that weren't usable before. edit: nice map of radio spectrum. Being able to use 28GHz seems like a massive leap. <a href="http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spectrum-Map.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.telecomcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spec...</a><p>The short-term solution is to open up more spectrum to mobile use, but things are looking pretty congested. <a href="http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://siliconangle.com/files/2011/03/spectrum_map1.jpg</a>
Reminds me of the 5-blade razor story, from parody to reality.<p><a href="http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html" rel="nofollow">http://boingboing.net/2005/09/14/gillettes-5blade-raz.html</a>