The biggest thing with 5g is mmWave, which has wifi-like range and requires line-of-site access to your phone, but delivers multi-gigabit speeds. However, if you're not downtown in a major metropolitan area and literally within sight-lines of a mmWave antenna, you're using basically just a more expensive version of 4g when your phone says it's 5g.
So, why the push to a more expensive technology for no reason? Because it allows networks to finally deprecate and take down their much slower 2g and 3g networks and allows carriers to unify their network around a single family of standards. Also, OFDM means that you should be able to reduce interference and improve coverage by using multiple channels at the same time.
The advantages are huge for network operators, but not really visible to consumers, which is why it doesn't actually seem to be a very big deal for the individual person.
The biggest thing with 5g is mmWave, which has wifi-like range and requires line-of-site access to your phone, but delivers multi-gigabit speeds. However, if you're not downtown in a major metropolitan area and literally within sight-lines of a mmWave antenna, you're using basically just a more expensive version of 4g when your phone says it's 5g.
So, why the push to a more expensive technology for no reason? Because it allows networks to finally deprecate and take down their much slower 2g and 3g networks and allows carriers to unify their network around a single family of standards. Also, OFDM means that you should be able to reduce interference and improve coverage by using multiple channels at the same time.
The advantages are huge for network operators, but not really visible to consumers, which is why it doesn't actually seem to be a very big deal for the individual person.