Back when I was young, cellphones didn’t come with any ‘G’ connection ratings attached. You just turned it on and were lucky to get a signal – especially since I grew up in the backwoods of rural Canada. Today, we’re a civilized society that demands 4G or better anywhere we go. A few years ago, 4G broke onto the scene. More recently, we’ve seen the rise of 4G LTE technology as it expands throughout cities in North America and Europe. But now, it looks like it’s time to prepare for the next big leap in mobile connection technology: 5G. That’s right: Samsung Electronics recently announced that it had made a big breakthrough in developing technology that could handle the speeds of fifth-generation networks. That means smartphone users could transfer large volumes of data at a much higher frequency band than today’s cell phones. Samsung even said that users could send massive data files “practically without limitation” and that users could send “super-high-definition movies in a matter of seconds.” Wow.

Here’s the catch

Now that I’ve got your hopes up, I’m going to throw them against a wall and smash them into a thousand tiny pieces. Samsung says that 5G technology should be commercially available by…wait for it…2020. The good news is that 5G technology will be aggressively funded by the European Union to the tune of 50 million Euros. So yes, we’re a few years away from widespread 5G adoption and the instant transfer of ‘super HD’ movies. And no, I don’t know if I’m going to be alive in 7 years. But if 5G is as fast as Samsung says it is, then it sounds like it will be worth the wait.