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5G Telecommunication Technology: History,
Overview, Requirements and Use Case Scenario
in Context of Nepal
Prabesh Paudel and Abhi Bhattarai
Abstract—5G, abbreviated from 5th Generation, is the new
"holy grail" in the telecommunication’s realm. First concep-
tualized by NASA, in association with m2mi Corp, in 2008,
5G Technology promises a significant improvement over the
existing 4G, LTE technologies by promising a sub 1-millisecond
latency and a bandwidth of over 10 Gigabits. The 4G technology
was introduced in Nepal just over a year ago on January 1,
2017, 7 years after its introduction in the American market
by Sprint. So we can foresee that it is going to take a long
time before 5G technology makes its way to Nepal. This paper
starts off with a brief introduction of 5G and its working
mechanism. Subsequently, the author discusses the prospects of
5G technologies and its implications in Nepal. In a country where
the usage of the mobile phone has skyrocketed in the past decade,
the introduction 5G technology can be very beneficial. So the
author has discussed the uses of 5G technology in different sectors
such as telephone communications, internet, internet of things etc.
Furthermore, this paper discusses the efficient ways of making
5G technology a viable option in Nepal.
Index Terms—5G, Evolution of 1G to 5G, Uses of 5G in Nepal
I. H ISTORY
The evolution of telecommunications in the past four
decades has been so rapid that the things we, today, take for
granted were beyond the contemplation of even the brightest
engineers in the 1970s and 1980s. It all started when James
Clark Maxwell, in the 1860s, discovered the electromagnetic
waves and suggested that they could travel at a speed close to
that of light. Not long after, Heinrich Hertz found a way to
produce and detect the electromagnetic waves, which later he
called the ‘Radio Waves.’ After the discovery of such waves,
bright minds of those times thought of using it in information
carriers.
1G, also called the First Generation of telecommunication
technology, was first used by the Americans and Europeans
in the late 1940s and 1950s in their communication devices.
Though these devices were marketed to be ‘mobile phones’,
they were heavily restrained by their size, security concerns
and the obstruction in the transmission of signals. The first
time when a proper cell phone was introduced was in 1979,
when NTT, Nippon Telegraph, and Telephone, introduced
the automated cellular network, known as First Generation
Cellular Network. 1G was a very primitive way of wireless
communication as the data were transmitted in the form of
analog signals. Even though the transmission contained a lot of
noise, this was still a breakthrough in the telecommunication
1
realm as the customers were presented by a truly "mobile"
phone.
Then came along the 2G, the second generation of telecom-
munication technology. This was when the signal transmission
radically changed. Unlike the previous generation, this gener-
ation used the digital signal transmission rather than analog.
First launched by Radiolinja in 1991, this was when the world
officially received a paradigm shift in cellular technology. This
technology addressed the problems the previous generation
had i.e. it transmitted the signals in digital form so noise wasn’t
really an issue, the data were digitally encrypted so that only
the intended receiver could receive and access it. This was
quickly followed by 2.5G and 2.75G which were a slightly
polished iteration of the same technology. This was also when
the world got to see the GPRS and EDGE technologies, the
mobile internet systems, which had a theoretical bandwidth of
50-kilobits per second and 1 megabit per second respectively.
A truly "mobile" cell phone with an internet access as a
bonus. What else could you ask for, right? But it turns out
the world wanted more. Even that "radical breakthrough" was
rendered obsolete only after a decade as it simply could not
meet the bandwidth for e-mail and internet even when they
were in their early stages. That was when 3G was introduced:
the third generation of telecommunication technology. The 3G
technology was first introduced in Japan by the NTT in the
early 2000s. Though there wasn’t much improvement over the
phone calls and messaging, one area where 3G outshone 2G
was the data rates. The data rates in 2G technology were
inordinately limited. With the introduction of 3G, the data
rates were boosted up to 7.2 Megabits per second. It was
also designed to become more secure by using end-to-end
security. The 3G technology was subsequently followed by
3.5G and 3.75G which increased the data rate caps. This too
was once thought to be revolutionary because it had a potential
to provide its users access to the internet from any given
location.
4G, the fourth generation of telecommunication technology,
was first released in 2009 in Oslo and Stockholm. 4G, or
commercially also called the LTE, provided significantly faster
data speeds with download capping at over a hundred megabits
per second and upload capping at over 50 megabits per second.
The other significant improvement in the 4G technology, other
than a better security and encryption, is the latency. 4G
technology boasts a 50 ms response time, which is well over
enough for any imaginable task at the time of its release.
However, like said earlier, just when we think we are almost

there, turns out there is still a mile of a journey ahead of us.
Isn’t it funny that every time there is a major breakthrough
in technology, we end up thinking that this is well above the
epitome of innovation while there is a lot more to achieve?
Telecommunication has been through a similar line of thought
and the way we think is now slowly changing solely because
of the changes we have witnessed in the last four decades.
II. W HAT IS 5G?
The exact definition of 5G has always been debated. In a
recent report published by GSMA Intelligence, they portray
that there are two views of 5G technology that exist today:
the hyper-connected vision and the next-generation radio ac-
cess technology. The first one, the hyper-connected vision, is
described as a new technology where all the useful features
from the existing generations like the 2G, 3G, and 4G are
scraped out to create a better system that can provide the
users with broader implications than the 4G and LTE that exist
today. Even though this technology provides a better service
than any other existing technology, this cannot be considered
a true “generational shift”. This is where the concept of a
next-generation radio access technology comes in.
The idea is to provide the users with the bandwidth through-
put of over a gigabit per second and a sub one millisecond
response time (latency).
Currently, there exists a standard that has to be met by a
technology to be considered 5G
• 1-10Gbps connections to endpoints in the field
• 1 millisecond end-to-end round trip delay (latency)
• 1000x bandwidth per unit area
• 10-100x number of connected devices
• (Perception of) 99.999% availability
• (Perception of) 100% coverage
• 90% reduction in network energy usage
• Up to ten-year battery life for low power, machine-type
devices
Source: GSMA Intelligence
Fig. 1. Requirements of 5G Source: Gemalto
2
III. T ECHNOLOGIES TO M EET THE R EQUIREMENTS OF 5G
The aforementioned requirements are not easy to be met.
So, there are five new technologies that might actually help
attain the requirements for 5G Technology.
A. Massive MIMO
Massive MIMO (Multiple-input multiple-output) is one
of the foundations of 5G technology. While the traditional
telecommunication technologies use the standard MIMO,
where the base stations use somewhere between two to a dozen
antennas, the Massive MIMO technology uses a huge number
of antennas, which can be a few dozens and in some cases even
a couple hundred. This exponential increase in the number
of antennas can help support lot of devices in a small area.
As Huawei puts in their report, 5G could provide up to a
million connections per square kilometers. This is nowhere
near possible with the existing standard MIMO, hence the
Massive MIMO. But, Massive MIMO comes with its own
disadvantage. Deploying over a hundred antennas in a single
place could cause a serious interference issue. Also, the MIMO
systems need to pack a lot more antennas in a small area, so
they require a use of higher frequency (shorter wavelength)
of signals. This is where the technology of Beamforming and
Millimeter waves come in.
B. Beamforming
Beamforming, basically, boils down to the principal of
“adapting the transmission of EMR to a particular surround-
ing”. The traditional antennas broadcast the radiation in every
direction which might cause a serious interference issue.
Beamforming works in such a way that if you are in the
middle of a cluster of buildings, the signal from your phone
is bouncing all over the place and interfering with signals
from other phones in that area. This causes the signal to
be fragmented into smaller pieces. So, the massive MIMO
station keeps track of all these small pieces and their timings
of arrival. Then they use their signal processing algorithms
to give you a clear, uninterfered signal. This would allow the
Massive MIMO station to send a focused data stream to your
phone. This is way more efficient than the existing technology.
C. Millimeter Waves
The wireless technology we use today uses the frequency of
less than 6 Gigahertz. However with more and more devices
coming online, we may see some significant decrement in
performance. The millimeter waves use higher frequency i.e.
lower wavelength signals (wavelength may vary from 1 to
10 millimeter). Scientists are testing the frequencies of up to
300 Gigahertz, which is going to create a lot of room for
the devices that are going to be added in the future. But
this technology comes with a major drawback. The signals
cannot easily travel through concrete, and they are likely to
be absorbed by trees and rain. Hence, the other technology:
Small Cells.

D. Small Cell Network
Small Cell Network is nothing but a concept of getting
around an obstacle rather than facing it. As said earlier, the
millimeter waves have a hard time traveling through obstacles,
foliage, and rain. So, small cell network allows the signal to
run past the obstacle. Huge Massive MIMO stations broadcast
the signals over long distances. Yet, adding thousands of small
low powered sub-stations all around the city would solve the
problem of signals being blocked by infrastructures. What this
basically does is that when a lot of sub-stations are available,
the phone can automatically switch to another, closer sub-
station when it experiences any kind of barrier.
E. Full Duplex
In one of the reports by IEEE Spectrum, they have explained
full duplex in the most understandable way possible: Picture
two people talking at the same time but still able to understand
one another, which means their conversation could take half
as long and their next discussion could start sooner. The base
stations we use today transfer signals one way at a time. This
is due to a principle called reciprocity which means that the
signals move forward and backward in the same frequency.
So, one has to wait until the signal has fully traveled to the
receiver until they send back another set of signals. Until
now, the transmission relied on waiting until the signal was
fully transmitted or using a different frequency, which is not
efficient at all due to the time it took to exchange signals
resulting in more power consumption. However, researchers
have been able to create a workaround for this problem.
They have created high-speed switches so that the signals can
reroute themselves while being able to walk past each other.
IV. U SE C ASE S CENARIO OF 5G IN N EPAL
Fig. 2. Use Cases vs their Need of Resources Source: GSMA Intelligence
Coming from a developing country, one has a list of many
crucial problems to deal with. If we commenced counting the
problems (from drinking water, drainage management system
to the unstable government), we feel as if these are too much
of the problems to handle for. We, being the citizens of Nepal,
3
have faced almost all of the subsisting social and technological
problems here and one of the main issues that we are suffer
from is the problem of Network and Internet connection.
From affecting students’ lives to obstructing the development
of the country, the problem of the Network connection has
well accommodated us till now. The largest telecommunication
networks of Nepal, Nepal Telecom and the fastest growing
telecommunication Ncell, operate almost everywhere in Nepal
covering almost every person using mobile and internet and
their major broadband penetration in Nepal are 3G, 4G and
Fiber Internet. Though the ISPs claim to provide high-speed
internet facilities to their users, the scenarios here are lot
different, let’s say worse as it seems that there is a desperate
need of an upgrade in these services which can be done by 5G.
While 5G is a concept that can have a tremendous impact on
the lives of people along with the development, some of them
can turn around the infrastructural development of Nepal.
A. Stable Phone Calls and Internet
Mobile voice over IP is an area completely reliant upon
internet connection. The lower reliability and less clarity in
the phone calls in Nepal are due to poor connection. Although
4G can solve the problem, large data loss due to the terrain
of Nepal and expensive equipment resulting in larger cost
makes it inaccessible to the majority of the population. An
important feature of the fifth generation network will be
massive MIMO which means the network will use large
antenna arrays to serve multiple terminals simultaneously. The
massive MIMO will result in superior energy efficiency due
to array gain and commendable spectral efficiency due to the
duplex multiplexing of many terminals simultaneously. It is
estimated that the number of mobile users will grow to 5 and
a half billion by 2020, and with the 5G network and its faster
speed and minimum data loss, the clear and reliable phone
calls will be accessible to everyone. The 5G will have an
increased download speed of up to 10 gigabits per second
from the 100 megabits per second allowed by the 4G service.
Moreover, the 5G doesn’t need fiber connection like that of the
previous generation networks. Additionally, the 5G network
needs smaller network towers which can be of the size of home
routers. So, as the large towers don’t need to be deployed, the
internet can reach far and wide into the rural areas of the hills
and the mountains where other infrastructures haven’t reached
yet. Thus, with the coverage of 99.99% and high stability, the
fifth generation network will bring noticeable improvements
in stability and access to phone calls and Internet in Nepal.
B. Massive Internet of Things (Massive IoT)
A huge network of physical devices which are connected
to the Internet capable of collecting and sharing data is called
the Internet of Things. Normal devices, through the addition
of sensors, can communicate without a human presence and
merge the obtained data into the physical world. While the
machines communicating with each other was visualized since
the early 1800s, 5G is thought to be the first connectivity
technology which will allow for versatile, energy smart, and
scalable form of the Internet of Everything. The complex

communication and computing problem will be solved by the
new network fusing the computing process with communi-
cations. Over 20 billion devices are set to be connected to
the Internet of Things by 2020. This large amount of size
can’t be sustained by the present network, but the ability of
5G to transfer larger data at a faster rate will enable such
massive size. For an instance, the non-orthogonal multiple
access of 5G network will make wearable healthcare devices
like Biosensors and heart monitors which need to send timely
patient data from patient in a rural part of Nepal to a hospital
possible which can’t be realized under current network. As
the 5G is projected to reach about 15% of the world’s
population by 2022, by reducing the latency time, the Internet
of Things will grow unprecedentedly and change life to enable
other services available from wearable healthcare devices to
remotely accessible home security in Nepal.
C. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
Although some recent technologies related to Virtual Reality
and Augmented Reality have reached Nepal, the development
of fifth-generation network can radicalize the field in the
nation. The Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality
(AR), which are in its developmental stage will undergo
drastic change under the fourth generation connectivity. Such
improved AR and VR will not only improve fascinating
entertainment means but also will provide incredible video
conferencing quality by enabling transmission of 4K and 8K
videos. The AR market and VR market are estimated to reach
to 114 billion and 65 billion dollars respectively by 2021. The
field requires the feeding of complex input mechanisms and
large data to be feed in a network which is simply impossible
for remote access through the current network. But the 5G
network is predicted to have a 10 times decrease in latency,
a 100 times improvement in network efficiency, and a 100
times improvement in traffic capacity over the current 4G
network which is a promising development for AR and VR.
The additional band-with and mobility mean that the lesson
run in a school in a city can be transmitted with the rich details
to a small village in the foot of the mountains. Moreover, with
the capacities of the 5G network, the interaction will have 6
degrees of freedom i.e. a person can move around within the
transmitted or a recorded video. Imagine a scenario where a
child in rural area of Nepal taking classes from a professor in
the United States. Sounds sweet, right?
D. Autonomous Driving
Although the number of the autonomous vehicle has trebled
in last two years, such technology has not been introduced
in Nepal. Autonomous driving can bring a drastic change in
Nepal by reducing accidents, lessening the transport costs for
agricultural products, and improving traffic and fuel efficiency.
For instance, some experts predict the Carbon Dioxide reduc-
tion by 300 million tons per year due to cars automation.
Enabling the communication between the vehicles and the
outer objects results in both efficient and safer use of the
road. This can also revolutionize traffic system by removing
the possibility of human error in a long distance drive, and
4
even create a higher speed system overall. Autonomous cars
rely on a combination of sensors, LIDAR (Light Detection
and Ranging), and radar to get the information about the
environment requiring a huge amount of power and data
synthesization. But, the major obstacle to materialize such
concept in Nepal seems to be the slow internet speed as a
short response time is vital to avoid such accidents. This
problem can be solved through the use of 5G as the command-
response time of a mere 1 millisecond means the vehicle can
react almost instantly while the network coverage with 100%
reliability in the 5G specification secures the longer proximity
control. Moreover, with lower latency and higher capacity, it
will enable the cars to drive themselves. For example, a car
can communicate with another car on a narrow road and make
a way for each other in a very short period of time. Also,
the 5G connectivity can even gather information from the
other moving cars, people, traffic lights, and even the road.
Such self-learned knowledge can also serve as a backup or
assistance for the automated car.
E. Computation Sharing
The majority of the population in Nepal has limited access
to the networked devices, and even those who have access,
have limited storage and computational capacity in their de-
vice. Although the 4G service is introduced in Nepal, the large
cost due to high data inefficiency means it is extremely limited
and, henceforth the use of cloud for storage and computation
is limited. But as we have discussed above with the accessible
and faster network due to 5G network, such devices can
be used to access high computational and storage capacity
along with signal processing and path computation using same
cloud principles. This can be extremely useful in a country
like Nepal as various enterprises, research institution, and
educational organization who can’t afford devices with such
high computational power still can get such service through
the Network. For an instance, the majority of universities
in the nation don’t have access to supercomputers which is
needed for many experiments like hydrogen atom collision
stimulation. However, with the use of a 5G network, if allowed
by the remote computer, a student in Nepal can create such
stimulation in a supercomputer located remotely, let’s say in
the USA. So, such expensive services can be shared and can
impact massively in the development of a country like Nepal
where people are unable to buy devices with such capacities.
V. C ONCLUSION
There was a time when fire was the most brilliant human
invention ever. Humans have come a long way since then.
Today, the analog cell phones belong to the museums, but they
too were once the “breakthrough” in telecommunications. But
as the advancement in technology took place, along came the
urge to achieve even more. Our level of dissatisfaction rose to
a point where we humans are inspired to do whatever it takes
to push something to its absolute limit. Just like today, when
we laugh at the technology half a century ago and wonder
how people lived with those, our forthcoming generation are
going to look at us and wonder, there was once a time when the
 5

most powerful supercomputers took absolutely ages to perform
a simulation and the fastest response was still limited to a
millisecond.
Nepal, today, is not very developed in terms of access to
technology. In a country where 3G is still the most common
form of internet and 4G was introduced only after half a
decade of being a global standard, it is not going to be a
surprise if 5G takes a decade to makes its way to the Nepali
commercial market. So, it is in the hands of us enthusiasts and
engineers to help Nepal become one of the countries to adapt
5G at the earliest instance possible.
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5g
Prabesh Paudel Author is an A Level Graduate from St. Xavier’s College,
Maitighar, Kathmandu
Email: itsprabesh@gmail.com
Abhi Bhattarai Author is a Plus 2 Graduate from Pentagon International
College, Tinkune, Kathmandu
Email: abhi.bhattarai135@gmail.com

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