The troubled past and uncertain future of radio interference

The last-and only-radio innovator having no reason to think about interference was Heinrich Hertz, when he fired up the world's first radio transmitter in 1886. Once he turned on a second one, he created the potential for interference. It's been a problem ever since. Indeed, the problem is now acute and could easily get much worse. That's because 5G mobile data service is on the way, promising as much as gigabit-per-second data connections over short distances. In advance of the 5G rollout, which should begin around 2020, engineers are working through all the usual concerns, including frequency choices, propagation, reliability, and battery life-plus one more: keeping transmissions from millions of very small, very mobile radios from interfering with one another. If these engineers don't solve this problem, digital services on your phone won't be much better than they are now.