What were the three headline performance goals of 5G relative to 4G, and when was it standardised?

5G aimed for a 10× higher peak bitrate, 10× lower latency, and 100× more traffic capacity than 4G — standardised by 3GPP starting with Release 15 (frozen June 2019), after first appearing mid-2018.

The three goals "at a glance":

• 10× increase in peak bitrate
• 10× reduction in latency
• 100× increase in traffic capacity vs. 4G

Standardisation timeline:

• Mid-2018: 5G appears (3GPP Release 15)
• Release 15 (the first 5G spec): planned for end 2018, actually frozen 2019-06-07 — the "general build for mobile internet"
• Release 16: planned March 2020, postponed to end 2020 — added IoT (machine-to-machine) and ultra-low latency

Headline figures often quoted: data rates up to a theoretical 20 Gbit/s, latency from a few ms down to < 1 ms, and the ability to address ~100 billion devices worldwide.

Tip: Remember the "10/10/100" rule of thumb — 10× speed, 10× lower latency, 100× capacity. It captures 5G's ambition in one line. And note 5G NR is not backwards-compatible with 4G — it's a genuinely new radio interface.

Go deeper:

• 5G (Wikipedia) — the full picture: goals, spectrum, release timeline, and how the headline figures map to real deployments.
• Switzerland's first end-to-end 5G data connection (Swisscom) — the real-world milestone that opened this lecture's 5G story: a concrete "what 5G actually does" anchor for the headline goals.