Talking about 5 Generation
I expect you’ve heard of 5G, which you probably know has something to do with mobile phones, but what is it really?
It all relates to how equipment (not just phones) connects with other equipment wirelessly. The G stands for generation, and in the past 40 years we have evolved from 1G to 5G. 1G gave us sound, 2G gave us text, 3G gave us mobile internet and 4G made everything about ten times faster.
5G, when it is properly available, will make everything another ten times faster still, offer far more capacity and reduce the delay between sending and receiving (the ‘latency rate’) to as near zero as makes no difference. It will allow new farming techniques that use drones to plant, monitor and water crops, and service many more things, such as self-driving cars, fridges, baby monitors and fire alarms, that are daily being connected to the internet.
There are numerous practical difficulties: 5G achieves its high speeds by using ‘millimetre waves’ (mmwave), which are extremely high-frequency radio waves. Unfortunately, they travel only a few hundred yards and then only between points that have an uninterrupted line of sight. They struggle with bad weather and can’t go through walls. So, for the time being, 5G often has to rely on the same radio waves that 4G uses, which travel further and aren’t frightened of rain but are not as fast.
At present there aren’t anything like enough masts to provide even a national 4G service, and a 5G network would need many more than that. To provide universal 5G, we’ll need a gigantic, new infrastructure of masts, all a few hundred yards apart at most.
So the phone companies are spending fortunes installing masts all over the place. That’s fine in a town, but getting 5G established in the countryside is going to be challenging. It was suggested that church towers might be used, which sounded like a good idea, but the churches lost interest when the phone companies said that they were not prepared to pay rent. Quelle surprise.
In the meantime, phones that can make the best of the 5G network, when you can find it, are far too expensive.
Despite all this, in my view, and in the words of Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 and All That, 5G is ‘a Good Thing’ or, at any rate, could be. It might hugely benefit many areas of life – more than we know at present. In healthcare, it will enable remote surgery, and it might even make autonomous cars safe. But it’s years away from being universally available in the UK, if it ever is.
One final point: despite some widely shared, Facebook-based conspiracy theories, there is no evidence of a link between 5G and coronavirus. None at all. Not a sausage. Viruses cannot travel on radio waves or mobile networks. So no need to wear that hat lined with tinfoil.
money (ie your savings) returned when you wanted it. But NS&I has lengthened the odds on a £1 Premium Bond winning a prize from 24,500:1 to 34,500:1. Banks say their accounts give better odds and pay interest as well.
Nationwide Building Society has an 18-month fixed-rate bond, the Mutual Reward Bond, which pays 0.5% interest. There will be one prize draw (next February) to win £10,000. Savers get one entry for every £100 saved and the maximum investment is £10,000, which is equal to 100 entries and gives a 1 in 200 chance of winning. The more people who save, the more £10,000 prizes will be handed out.
The Family Building Society’s Windfall Bond earns the Bank of England base rate, 0.1% at present, with 21 prizes each month, including one worth £50,000. Each bond costs £10,000 and has a 1 in 714 chance of winning each month and a 1 in 60 chance of winning once a year.
With Halifax’s long-running Savers Prize Draw, savers with at least £5,000 across various Halifax and Bank of Scotland accounts are automatically entered and 1,600 of them will win, with three top prizes of £100,000. Halifax does not reveal the odds, but £550,000 is won each month.
The Treasury is running a Prizesaver pilot with 15 credit unions. Members get one entry for every £1 they save, up to a maximum of 200 a month. Interest depends on the individual credit union. They can win £5,000 or one of 20 prizes worth £20. If the trial is successful in attracting more people to save with credit unions, the scheme will be extended when the pilot ends next March.
Whether a prize-paying savings account turns out to be the better bet for you is entirely down to luck. Never forget to check the interest you will earn.