How will 5G be different than 4G?

This is a great question, especially as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to auction off the first set of US licenses for wireless airwaves that will deliver 5G service.

Yes, 5G will be up to 100 times faster than current cellular connections — faster, in fact, than many home broadband services.

But it's not just about speed. Networks will also have more capacity and be more responsive than with previous generations of wireless. That means more people and things can work on the same network without bringing it to a crawl, and with less latency. Latency refers to the lag time between a device pinging the network and getting a response.

It's this latency improvement that will help bring to life some of the hottest trends in technology, like self- driving vehicles and VR. The most intriguing bit: We don't even know some of the apps that will emerge out of 5G, similar to how we couldn't  have predicted the advent of services like Uber or Facebook Live on your phone.