Complete Guide to 5G Mobile Booster (2025)

Before we dig into the topic of 5G mobile booster systems and why they are important to have, let’s first understand what 5G is in real.

Quick Recap of the First Four Generations of Mobile Networks

5G stands for Fifth Generation. Simply put, it is the fifth generation of mobile networks. So, to give you a little background about the first four generations of mobile connectivity, here is a quick recap.

1G (First Generation)

It only facilitated voice calls in the 1980s. You would have seen some of the brick wireless phones in movies of that time.

2G (Second Generation)

It added a texting facility for mobile users along with voice calls. It killed the pagers in a very short time. This was the age of feature phones, which were smaller than the previous brick phones and easily carried into pockets.

3G (Third Generation)

3G further enhanced the facilities for mobile users on the 2G network. With 3G they can make voice calls, send text messages, and use mobile internet data. It facilitated the sending of pictures, videos, emails, etc., using a mobile phone.

For boosted 3G signals, check our collection of 3G Mobile signal boosters.

4G (Fourth Generation)

Then came the 4G, which facilitated watching long videos, live streaming, playing online games, and doing many other things like making video calls, etc., using a mobile phone.

5G (Fifth Generation)

It is the newest technology and the most advanced version of all of the previous generation of mobile networks.

5G will soon completely replace 4G LTE standards. 5G is an improvements in everything from mobile communications to data and download speeds, which are expected to beat the fastest land-based ISPs.

With almost no latency, it will also help improve the technologies of driverless vehicles, smart homes, smartphones, and any other Internet of Things item.

Simply put, it can help increase the efficiency of every internet-connected device and gadget many times.

What is 5G?

5G refers to the 5G NR or “5G New Radio” standard. As we have stated earlier, it is the 5th generation of mobile networking standards. The 5G promises:

• 100x Faster Data: 100x faster than the first version of 4G LTE, 20x faster than the current standard version of 4G LTE.
• 100x More Capability: It’s not just faster, but the overall capacity is 100x that of the current 4G LTE networks.
• Coverage to 100x More Devices: 5G can handle 100x the number of connected devices at a time as compared to the current 4G LTE networks.
• 5x Lower Latency: Latency is a measure of the time taken by a device to communicate over a network. It simply means the time taken by the mobile tower to respond to the mobile device for its input. 5G networks are expected to have 5x lower latency than the current 4G LTE networks. It helps improve the performance of online gaming, connected cars, virtual and augmented reality, and other real-time communication systems.
• Slicing: This means that mobile service providers can allocate the bandwidth of mobile towers partly for mobile users to access the internet and partly for driverless cars roaming on the roads using mobile data for navigation.

The 5G NR standard was approved in June of 2018. EE was the first network to launch 5G in the UK on May 30, 2019, Vodafone 5G went live on July 3 and O2 followed up with an October 17, 2019.

While the “Three” network launched 5G in late February of 2020, and is now available in parts of over 588 towns and cities across the UK, covering over 60% of the UK outdoors.

Check whether your area is covered by 5G or not through 5G coverage checker.

How is 5G Different from the Previous Generations?

As noted earlier, 5G comes with faster data speeds, handles more devices, has additional capacity, and lower latency than current 4G LTE networks.

To fulfill the promise of 5G, new technologies have been developed, and an additional portion of the radio frequency spectrum has been made available. When talking about 5G mobile booster, it’s useful to break down 5G into two distinct types of networks:

Sub-6 GHz 5G

Sub-6 GHz 5G is a type of 5G network that runs on frequency bands that are similar or the same as the existing frequencies use by 4G LTE networks.

These networks can be deployed using traditional cell towers and cover large areas (10 miles from the tower or more).

5G deployed on these frequency bands will have faster data speeds and some of the other benefits of 5G but on a much smaller scale.

Millimeter-Wave 5G

When we talk about the revolutionary 5G technology, we are talking about the millimeter-wave 5G, which will be deployed on the 28, 37 & 39 GHz frequency bands.

These high-frequency bands allow for very fast data transfer rates, low latency, and high capacity, but they can only travel a very short distance.

For this reason, thousands of mini cell towers, known as “small cells”, will have to be deployed along with an entire fibre network for millimetre-wave 5G to operate to its full capacity.

Here is how you can understand it better. A traditional cell tower can broadcast mobile signal up to 10+ miles, whereas the millimetre-wave 5G “cell towers” can only cover 1,500 to 2,000 ft.

How Does Millimeter Wave 5G Work?

Millimeter waves cover the 28, 37 & 39 GHz frequency bands that will be used for 5G in urban and suburban areas. Millimeter waves travel much shorter distances than the sub-6 GHz frequencies currently used for mobile phones.

So while a traditional cell tower can cover 10 miles or further, 5G millimeter wave small cell towers will only be able to cover about 2,000 ft (0.38 miles).

Additionally, millimeter waves are very susceptible to being blocked by buildings, trees, people, and rain, and just about anything else.

In order to provide coverage using these frequencies, the small cell towers will use new technologies, including beamforming and beam tracking, which are ways of focusing an RF (Radio Frequency) beam so it can take the optimal path to the end-user.

If Millimeter Waves are so Challenging, Why Use Them?

Our current 5G mobile booster support 5 different frequency bands (850, 900, 1800, 2100 MHz and CDMA) that cover the majority of the existing mobile networks. If you add up the downlink bandwidth for all 5 bands, you get approximately 157 MHz of bandwidth.

This is all of the bandwidth the moible carriers currently have available to push data to your mobile phones. The limited amount of available frequency spectrum leads to slower data.

Millimeter-wave frequencies have 24 times as much spectrum available, which is how millimeter-wave 5G will be able to handle so much additional data and provide faster mobile internet data transfer.

What Makes 5G so Special?

Mobile Phones are quite necessary in the digital world. Over 77% of the world’s population owns a mobile phone and it plays such a pivotal role in our day-to-day lives.

From communication, navigation, gaming, social networking, entertainment, digital assistant, digital notepad, camera, compass, e-wallet, and a lot more can be done with a mobile phone. Hence, there is always room for improvement in it and consumers always demand more.

Though many things make 5G so special the huge increase in the data speeds is the most talked-about feature. As smart mobile devices increase in usage by consumers, the frequencies available to use get more crowded. This is a lot like trying to cram too many cars on a one-lane road.

As far as mobile use is concerned, this results in longer download times and an increase in dropped calls. A movie in high definition might take ten minutes to download at the fastest current 4G LTE speeds; 5G is projected to take less than a second to download that movie. So you can imagine the increase in the data transfer rate with 5G NR.

How does 5G work?

In order to make 5G work, several technologies will be used to ensure the fast, stable signal consumers require. These include millimetre waves, small cells, massive MIMO, full-duplex, and beamforming.

To get the higher speeds necessary for 5G, the new infrastructure will support a higher frequency that is much faster but can only travel short distances (for the same reasons AM radio stations can be accessed much farther away from a broadcasting tower than an FM station). Remember that the 5G is a radio frequency network.

So, the telecom engineers working on 5G technologies are looking at using millimeter waves. Originally used in radar and satellite systems, millimeter waves are radio waves that operate at very high frequencies.

These are measured in lengths of millimetres, whereas the current ones operate in tens of centimetres. Mobile technology as we know it depends on radio frequencies that travel long distances.

The downside to these is that it will be hard for these radio frequencies to penetrate building materials, and the waves are so small that rainy weather and even plant cover can interrupt the signal even more than the current RF used in current mobile service.

Fortunately, these can be fixed by using technology already in service: “small cells”.

Small cells are basically miniature cell towers. They have the advantage of being portable and energy-efficient, so they can be installed and moved to areas that need more coverage.

Another advantage is that they can be easily installed on existing structures, such as telephone and light poles, and added to buildings without being an eyesore. So the mobile providers don’t have to spend much on installing new poles and masts everywhere.

They will also take advantage of a new antenna: massive MIMO.

Massive MIMO

MIMO stands for multiple-input multiple-output. MIMO means wireless systems that use more than two transmitters and receivers. Massive MIMO will increase the data transfer rate to an epic level.

Current 4G base stations use a dozen ports, whereas 5G base stations will use up to one hundred. This means an over twenty times increase in a single base station’s capacity.

Beamforming

Many mobile phone users and lots of data transfer mean lots of interference. Beamforming solves this problem by acting as a traffic light. It works by finding the fastest path for data to be received and lessens interference for massive MIMO. For millimetre waves, beamforming can strengthen the mobile signal and make blockage by objects less problematic.

Full Duplex

The full-duplex technology allows 5G transceivers to send and receive data concurrently over the same frequency, which current base stations are incapable of doing.

There is a huge fluctuation in data speeds in the current mobile frequencies and you might have noticed it while using mobile data to watch a movie or live streaming on your mobile phone. The full-duplex technology was previously very difficult to employ, but new improvements to the transistors have finally made this technology able to be employed.

Should I Order a 5G Mobile Booster Now or Wait?

We hear from people every day who have heard about 5G and want to know if they should get a 5G Mobile booster today or if there are new 5G Mobile booster systems coming soon, so we put together a guide to help you understand more about 5G and make an informed decision when purchasing a signal booster:

• Vodafone, EE and O2 .
• 5G is here; however, it could take a few more years for each carrier to complete its nationwide networks and for customers to upgrade to 5 G-capable phones. The existing 4G LTE networks will continue to be supported and improved, likely through at least 2030, and many analysts predict that 4G LTE will continue to handle more connections than 5G through at least 2025.
• If 5G devices follow a similar path as the upgrade from 3G to 4G LTE, at which point, you will need a 5G signal booster.
• Until then, our currently available multi-carrier signal boosters will continue to support the existing 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE networks.
• You may need specially developed 5G Mobile Booster systems for major carriers such as Vodafone, EE and O2

If you’re currently facing bad mobile signal, the best course of action is to purchase a 5G mobile signal booster that supports multiple frequencies.

Our current 4G signal boosters will also work with any 5G networks that are deployed on any of the frequencies that are currently supported.

If you have any questions or if you just want to check and make sure there haven’t been any new developments since we last updated this post, please contact us.

Is 4G LTE Going Away?

Not anytime soon! 5G deployment is going to take more years, especially in suburban and rural areas where coverage using millimetre waves will be most difficult. Many analysts have predicted that 4G LTE will remain the dominant network in the UK (by the number of connections) at least till the end of this year 2025.

Will 5G Cost More?

Yes, 5G will likely cost more than your current service. Technically, 5G access will be an extra £10-20/month on top of an existing unlimited data plan.

Check 5G SIM deals in the UK

What Should I Do Now?

If you’re currently experiencing a problem with mobile service and need a mobile phone signal booster to improve your signal, please contact us for personalized assistance, or you can use the product selection wizard on our website to help determine the best Mobile Phone Signal Booster for your needs.

Frequently Asked Questions About 5G Signal Boosters

• Are Mobile Signal Boosters Legal in the UK?”
  Yes, Ofcom has made it legal to use mobile phone signal boosters in the UK, using only boosters that meet UK network standards.
• Will 5G Have Better Reception?
  5G is touted as a game-changing technology that can dramatically boost the speed and coverage of wireless networks. It can run between 10 and 100 times faster than your typical 4G mobile connection today.
• Is 5G a Stronger Signal than 4G?
  Said, 5G is widely believed to be smarter, faster and more efficient than 4G. It offers mobile data speeds that far outstrip the fastest home broadband network currently available to consumers.
• Does 5G Require More Cell Towers?
  In particular, the high radio frequencies 5G uses can’t travel as far as current 4G wavelengths. This means 5G will require an enormous expansion of the current cell tower infrastructure to function more properly.

Get the Best 5G Signal Booster

Don’t let weak mobile signals interrupt your digital life. Our advanced 4G and 5G signal booster systems amplify your mobile phone connection across multiple frequency bands, ensuring you stay connected with lightning-fast speeds and crystal-clear calls. Check the Best 5G signal booster on our website.