Here are some facts:
- Comcast use to have a 300GB/month limit. Now that limit is 1TB.
- Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, & T-Mobile have all increased their limits over time.
- As speeds have increased and consumption too, all providers have increased their limits too in response.
It's absolutely foolish to believe that carriers will build new networks with vastly increased speeds, as consumers consume more data, and not also increase their caps as they have done for the past 10 years. When the iPhone debuted in 2007, the data cap was around 200MB/month.
5G offers speeds up to 30 Gbit/s per radio cell. 4G today delivers a maximum of 100 to 1000 Mbit/s. But speed is only part of the benefit, as I said previously.
Compared to today's LTE networks, 5G should facilitate a data transfer rate which lies between 10 to 30 times more per radio cell, with roughly 1000 times the capacity. This will make it possible to address up to 100 thousand million mobile networked devices at the same time worldwide, including "things" in the Internet of Things. Energy efficiency is also set to rise significantly: Energy consumption per transferred bit on the end devices themselves will drop to a thousandth of its previous level. This facilitates up to 10 years of autonomy in terms of power.
5G networks use additional technical elements to reliably provide 5G mobile network services when large numbers of mobile users need coverage. The most important element here is 'Massive MIMO' (Multiple Input, Multiple Output). They can use beam forming to work around things like large buildings and communicate directly with specific devices thanks to the setup of their towers.
On average, private mobile users 'consume' around 3 gigabytes a month. When you bring Millennials into the picture, the demand rises to a whopping 35 GB/month, which is expected to double every 12 to 18 months. 4G doesn't have the ability to supply those kinds of requirements.
So yes, as I said previously, 5G is about more than simply speed. It's about supporting the needs of the future as the number of connected devices and quantity of content consumed continues to increase.