Why 5G mobile broadband will be good for your health

Research has shown regular humans (let alone Hongkongers) get stressed and their hearts go ba-boom when there’s a delay loading handset content, so lightning-fast downloads should calm us all down

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VR on a mobile phone? Future 5G networks will allow this.

Published: 6:15am, 20 Mar 2017Updated: 6:15am, 20 Mar 2017

We all know the attention span of smartphone users is falling dramatically, but neuroscience research has revealed that even small content loading delays on our phones can raise heart rates by almost 40 per cent.

The study of the brain activity, pulse and eye movements of 150 volunteers in Dusseldorf, Germany, commissioned by telecoms giant Ericsson last year, found that, on average, single delays resulted in a 38 per cent increase in heart rate and, therefore, tension and higher stress levels. The chief culprits in this 4G era are buffering video, web pages that take more than a second to load, and selfies that take two seconds or more to upload to Facebook.

The conclusion? Anything less than ultra high-speed 4G connections leave people not only frustrated, but psychologically and physically affected.

Could super-fast 5G mobile broadband help calm us all down? The telecom industry is planning to install all-new 5G networks within the next few years to make downloads and uploads up to 1,000 times faster than 4G.

Initially, we’re going to hear about one-gigbit-per-second (Gbps) speeds referred to as “gigabit” downloads. Hong Kong already has some of the highest peak speeds of 4G in the world, with CSL currently offering a top speed of 450 megabits-per-second, but a whole new class of smartphone will be needed to deal in speeds at least three times faster.

Other than stress busting, 5G also promises to enhance our experience of digital entertainment. One of the key uses of gigabit downloads will be to stream Ultra HD 4K video from the likes of YouTube and Netflix.