Boris Promises 5G Mobile and Faster Broadband in London City by 2020

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will this week announce the UK capital city’s long term infrastructure investment plan to 2050 and predicted that the “world’s first” major deployment of future 5G based Mobile Broadband technology will also be rolled out there by 2020. Obviously.

According to the Telegraph, Boris said, “London is earning a reputation for being the tech capital of Europe and that is why we need to ensure every Londoner is able to access the very best digital connectivity. Rapidly improving the connectivity of this great city is a key part of the Infrastructure Plan for London.”

Admittedly we’re still several years away from seeing a final standard for the next-generation of mobile technology or even confirming the necessary airwaves for it, although the 2020 target itself isn’t perhaps as “ambitious” as some reports claim given that almost everybody else in the world seems to be anticipating completion of the new standard by then.

The 5G technology is promising to deliver peak theoretical speeds of 10,000 Megabits per second (10Gbps) or more, although there are a variety of different camps developing the future solution and there’s no guarantee that the United Kingdom’s approach, which is being led by Surrey University’s 5G Innovation Centre, will get there any faster or be any more acceptable than its rivals in Asia or Europe.

London will surely be the first UK city to get 5G but we’d be surprised if it became the world’s first deployment and indeed sometimes there are advantages to roll-outs being made a little later but on more mature hardware (cost, performance and battery life etc.).

On top of all that the city’s new infrastructure plan also promises to help provide more broadband ISP speed data for homes and offices to help new tenants or buyers make their purchase. Apparently this same data will also be used to map where improvements are needed in the city’s infrastructure, although it’s unclear where this information will be sourced from (linear speedtests only reflect existing connections and not necessarily the availability of potentially faster services).