Eir: 5G not ready in Ireland for years

Irish firms and consumers won’t be able to avail of 5G technology for at least three or four years, eir’s chief technology officer has warned.

Fifth generation mobile networks, or 5G, has dominated discussion at major technology events such as Mobile World Congress, as carriers rush to provide the technology it is envisioned will underpin much of the internet-of-things revolution.

With parts of the country still struggling to get reliable 3G coverage, however, it seems it will be quite some time before 5G is available.

“I do think that 5G is a little bit away from being commercially viable, in particular, here.

"The 5G standards haven’t completely bedded down yet as we all know and I certainly think it’s going to be three or four years before we see any serious pilots on 5G here,” eir chief technology officer Helene Graham.

Joe Cunningham, chair of IT professional services firm Ammeon and pioneer of SMS messaging in the 90s, told the Telecoms Graduate Initiative conference that 4G — the forerunner to 5G — was far more prevalent than we in Ireland think, however.

“A billion connections are now on 4G. We all think of 4G as cutting edge and maybe we’ll get it some day [but] a billion people are going to have those connections and that mobile bandwidth is going up and up and up.

"The expectations of millennials... is that they’ll always be connected and that that bandwidth will always be there for them to use,” he said.