超快5G無線服務:正在路上,請再耐心等一等!

It looks like 5G is here! At least that's what it looked like if you wandered around Mobile World Congress 2016 this week. Booths filled with information about the next-generation wireless standard — some even offering "demonstrations" of the technology — seemed to occupy more floor space even than new smartphones.

5G似乎走進了我們的生活。至少，如果你本週漫步在2016年世界移動大會的會場上是這樣的。會場內的各大展示櫃都是關於下一代無線通信標準的信息。其中一些甚至提供了該技術的展示體驗服務。5G似乎佔有比新智能手機更多的樓層空間。

But the reality is that the successor to 4G cellular service is still, according to best estimations, around five years from connecting devices around the world.

然而現實是，就算即使按照最樂觀的估計，4G蜂窩服務的接班人仍然需要五年時間才能爲全世界的通訊設備使用。

So why, then, was 5G the talk of Barcelona's big international tech conference now?

那麼爲何在巴塞羅那的大型國際化技術會議上會有關於5G的討論呢？

The idea of 5G needed no inventing, per se: We've all known for a while that "5" would come after "4." But what the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance did shortly after last year's MWC was release something called the "5G White Paper" to lay out what 5G wireless will look like in terms of speed. (Assuming, of course, that consumer companies and hardware vendors can cooperate.)

5G的概念並不需要特地去創造，本來我們就知道"5"會是接着"4"之後下一個到來的。在去年世界移動通信大會不久之後，下一代移動網絡聯盟發佈了"5G白皮書"來設定將來5G無線網絡將會達到什麼速度。（當然，前提是消費者公司和硬件供應商都給予配合。）

In that paper, the alliance announced the next mobile data standard should be capable of a healthy 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). Yep: With 4G speeds in the U.S. today averaging somewhere between 5 and 12 megabits per second (Mbps), 5G will look to improve upon its predecessor by up to 200 times.

在白皮書中，該聯盟宣佈下一代移動數據標準應該能夠達每秒1千兆比特。是的，如今美國平均的4G速度在5兆到12兆，5G的速度比它的前輩要快上200倍。

You're probably psyched to imagine how fast apps, video, and other data will download or stream over 5G. But the idea of imminent gigabit mobile data is even more exciting for wireless infrastructure companies such as Qualcomm and Cisco. (After all, they'll be ones who'll have to upgrade that infrastructure to the new standard.) This year's Mobile World Congress gave these brands the first big international stage where they could trot out their moonshot ideas for the potential new tech. And trot they did.

你可能已經在激動地想象手機應用、視頻以及其他數據在5G網絡下運行或下載的速度該有多快了。但是關於即將來臨的千兆級移動數據流量更讓Qualcomm和Cisco這樣的無線設備公司興奮（畢竟它們纔是需要爲迎合新標準而將系統升級換代的公司）。今年的世界移動大會給這些品牌第一次走上國際舞臺的機會，它們能夠展示潛在新技術的瘋狂想法。而它們也的確士氣高昂地完成了這些展示。