Now playing:

Watch this:

by the end of 2025, adding up to about 1.8 billion connections around the globe. 

For years tech companies () have been talking about how 5G will change the way we live. The technology's hallmarks -- blazing speeds, responsiveness and reliability -- are supposed to enable self-driving cars and revolutionize health care. Augmented and virtual reality should become even more immersive, while gaming is expected to make giant leaps. So far, though, that's just not the reality for most consumers.

Instead, the most common and widespread version of 5G in the US, called low-band, isn't much faster than 4G. Millimeter wave 5G, which does provide huge speed leaps, still has a limited footprint and reach, and pesky windows and trees get in the way. Midband 5G -- which includes a big swath of airwaves known as C-band and offers a between speed and range -- hasn't been deployed by most carriers in the US. Until midband networks cover the country, 5G's benefits are likely to be hit-or-miss. 

Lack of apps and services

5G's rollout and adoption is outpacing 4G a decade ago, but the benefits of the newer technology aren't yet quite as obvious. 4G enabled the rise of the smartphone era. Without it, apps like Uber, AirBNB, Instagram and TikTok wouldn't exist, and iPhones, Samsung Galaxy devices and other phones wouldn't be essential devices. 5G, while fast and responsive, doesn't yet have killer uses or services, at least not for consumers. Right now, 5G is all about doing what we already do, just a bit faster. 

"This has been a classic, 'build it and they will come' in terms of use cases for 5G," Hyers said. "Carriers have built out 5G networks and are still building them out, but the new ballpark doesn't seem to be much better than the old ballpark. I don't think 'build it and they will come' is really relevant right now."

Today, the biggest 5G uses for consumers on smartphones are streaming games and higher quality video. Google Duo, for instance, will recognize if someone's Samsung Galaxy phone is accessing a 5G network and will move the video to full HD performance. Other apps will do the same. But so far, there aren't many that actually have introduced new features that specifically require 5G or showcase just how speedy it is. 

"I still believe there are going to be a lot of advantages from a 5G perspective across the board for things that matter like connected cities and activating all the sensors and all the things that can generate way more data than we know what to do with," Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. "But from consumers and a phone perspective, that remains the more difficult part to demonstrate why you need 5G."

Right now, most uses for 5G are industrial, like powering robots in Samsung factories to move parts from one area of a floor to another. 

When new standards emerge around massive machine communications, latency and reliability, they will enable truly new applications, predicted Finbarr Moynihan, vice president of corporate marketing at Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek. That's for industrial uses, as well as areas like augmented and virtual reality and cloud gaming, he said. 

"The first focus of 5G … was really much more heavily focused on mobile broadband, delivering more mobile data to everybody," Moynihan said. But that will expand, he said, as well as enable different devices that tap into the connectivity. 

Building broader networks

Initially, most consumers haven't seen a huge speed boost when it comes to 5G. As 5G has rolled out across the globe, 4G networks have also improved. And mmWave, which is what enables some of the more futuristic uses of 5G, is only available in certain pockets of the US and has a limited reach. Still, the buildout of 5G networks has continued at a fast clip, even with the novel coronavirus pandemic spreading around the world.

"We're making tremendous progress as an industry in getting 5G out there, not just in the US but around the world," said Alok Shah, vice president of networks strategy, business development and marketing at Samsung Electronics America. Today, there are 162 operators in 68 countries that are providing 5G commercial service, he said, and countless companies are installing private networks in their own factories and offices. 

"It's pretty staggering where we've gotten to over the past five years since the first networks were deployed," Shah said. "And where we're headed over the next few years."

What's expected to improve speeds this year and next is the impending rollout of carriers' midband 5G networks. In the early days of 5G, kreditka.pw Verizon favored mmWave and built it in major city centers and event venues. AT&T and T-Mobile also built some mmWave, but they mostly focused on low-band 5G. T-Mobile gained midband spectrum through its acquisition of Sprint, giving it a headstart in rolling out the technology that's broadly seen as the "sweet spot" for speed and range. 

"We expect [midband] to be quite transformative to the 5G experience in the US," MediaTek's Moynihan said. 

during a US Federal Communications Commission auction in February, while AT&T paid $23 billion and T-Mobile spent $9 billion. But T-Mobile has an early edge with that Sprint spectrum.

"We'll deploy more midband 5G this year … than AT&T and Verizon combined, on a footprint which is twice as big as anything that they've announced they're going to bring to the marketplace," Neville Ray, T-Mobile's president of technology, told CNET's Eli Blumenthal. 

, which , is one way consumers may come into contact with faster connectivity. It costs $60 per month, takes advantage of T-Mobile's 4G and 5G networks and offers unlimited data and no throttling back to slower speeds once hitting high data usage.