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A Personal Timeline of Mobile Telecom Generations

People talk about how 5G is here and the how everyone should dream about it.

Based on my history with mobile phone tech, I call BS. Industry-driven engineering and deployment finances have nothing to do with the reality of making a service widely available to customers.  It takes many years to deploy to a level where it impacts most customers.

I don't have a 5G phone yet, and that's because 5G deployment is in its early infancy, with no mature handsets on the market and ridiculously limited tower deployments.  I'm sure that'll change once the mobile phone companies experience increasing failure of their legacy equipment in the field.

The LTE rollout was a mess, with VoLTE maturing years after LTE rolled out.  Let's hope the 5G deployment isn't as awful.

My Timeline of Mobile Deployments
2G........: 11 Years, 1997 - 2008
3G........: 04 Years, 2008 - 2012
4G........: 06 Years, 2012 - 2018
4G (VoLTE): 05 Years, 2018 - 2023?
5G........: ?? Years, 2023? - 2034?

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