5G IS COMING, AND IT’S FORTIFIED WITH FIBER
5G will happen in the airy realm of radio waves. To get there, big telecoms have to harness underused parts of the spectrum. But there's another crucial part underlying this system: lowly cable. Huge numbers of new transmitters will be needed to relay all that data to your phone, and many of those transmitters will still connect to the internet through fiber-optic cable—glass as thin as strands of hair carrying pulses of light.
To make it all work, companies, including OFS Optics, a fiber-optics and cable company, are now being commissioned to produce millions of miles of new cable holding twice as many fiber pairs—two strands, one for the uplink and one for the downlink—as the old stuff.
Out in the world, these cables may be draped along utility poles or hidden in shallow trenches under city streets. Enormous lengths of cable carry the internet under the oceans between continents. In those places, mostly unseen, they may one day connect your 5G-enabled device and beam you into the future.
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/5g-is-coming-fortified-with-fiber/