Because 5G is more efficient. Here's a graph of predictions of data usage over the next few years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271405/global-mobile-dat

Because 5G is more efficient. Here's a graph of predictions of data usage over the next few years: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271405/global-mobile-data-traffic-forecast/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/271405/global-mobile-dat... People use their phones for data and the data consumption is increasing. You might not but people live stream sports, games, TV to their mobiles. Frequency bands are like radio stations. Better algorithms/etc to transfer more data at an instant means that more people can have a better experience using the airwaves. Like in busy train stations people will often have full signal but unusable internet connectivity. Faster speeds means that people are not using the airwaves for as long. Also mmWave is a way to get an extra density of data pushed as higher frequency means more throughput look at 2.4Ghz WiFi Vs 5Ghz WiFi. Of course the issue is that it gets blocked very easily. It's a progression. 3G masts have been switched to 4G and it'll start in a few years for 5G. But honestly it's a long multi year process. And it's not like 4G is going anywhere. Other things that 5G does is latency is lower so it could open up use cases such as data for autonomous cars, AR and VR (I'm a bit dubious on that tbh). Reason being that the break out to the internet can be at multiple points rather than a single point as it often is with LTE. But yeah, honestly from a user perspective there's not really going to be much of a difference. I don't think many operators are going to try selling 5G plans like they did for 4G