Re: what's the point?
Probably nobody needs 5G right now. I agree it's really difficult to see any need for this when 4G is already routinely getting better speeds than most home broadband connections.
That doesn't mean that there won't be a need for it at some point in the future, though, and if development stopped on wireless data tech, it could end up becoming a bottleneck at some point.
15 years ago when we were all marvelling at our shiny new feature phones with web/music/photo capabilities we realised that our 2G connections just weren't good enough to drive them any more. Fortunately, several years earlier despite there being no immediate need for faster-than-2g data, 3g was being developed and was deployed to suddenly make our feature phones do their amazing stuff.
3g was so fast, there couldn't possibly be a need for 10Mbps on a phone. Certainly not 100Mbps, that would be crazy -- but then came the iPhone, Android, tablets. Fortunately, 4g had been developed despite the need for it seeming inconceivable just a few years earlier.
I've no idea what devices might spring up that make 1Gbps+ necessary. I'm pretty sure they will spring up, nonetheless. It might be driverless transport that needs a huge continuous pipe of data. Weather data collection stations? Perhaps Pronhub will drive an adoption of ultra-super-duper-horrifically-detailed-HD running at 800Mbps? Maybe it's just more about aggregate bandwidth available in an area rather than provision of bandwidth to individual devices?
We don't always envision well how tech will be used in the future. Usually, the use-cases evolve from the capability of the underlying tech, not the other way round.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
