Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, has a vision for the future if regulators approve his company's blockbuster $ 85.4 billion bid for Time Warner.
It goes like this: In a few years, your cellphone's data connection will be so fast that you can download a television show in the blink of an eye and a movie in less than five seconds. (That compares with up to eight minutes now for a movie.) When that happens, Mr. Stephenson has suggested, you may as well just watch TV with your cellular connection and cancel your cable subscription.
Mr. Stephenson has indicated this ultrafast next-generation wireless technology, known as fifth-generation technology or 5G, would compete with traditional TV services. "I will be sorely disappointed if we are not going head-to-head" with cable providers by 2021, he said in a recent interview.
Yet the vision Mr. Stephenson describes as a pillar of the Time Warner deal may be a mirage.
That is because 5G is unlikely to be deployed in any meaningful capacity in the next decade. The technology, which is supposed to offer connectivity at least 100 times faster than what is now available, is at the center of a bitter fight between carriers and telecom equipment makers about how it should work. No resolution is expected until at least 2020, said Bengt Nordstrom, co-founder of Northstream, a telecommunications consulting firm. "Anything before that will just be window dressing," he said.
Even after companies and telecommunications groups define 5G and how it should operate, they face the high cost of installing a wireless network capable of handling the fast wireless speeds.
"They take a tremendous amount of money to build," Craig Moffett, a telecommunications analyst, said of 5G networks. "The obvious question for AT&T is, where is the money going to come from to build out 5G networks on a large scale?"
The progress on 5G — or lack thereof — offers a reality check to Mr. Stephenson's pronouncements about how a behemoth AT&T merger with Time Warner would work. Executives have promoted the deal as bringing many other benefits, like data sharing between the companies, but the ultrafast mobile video service stands out as one of the underpinnings of the acquisition.
Tom Keathley, AT&T's senior vice president of wireless network architecture and design, said the company's goal was to build a nationwide network that "enables our customers to view video where and on whatever device they choose," and that 5G would rely on a combination of types of connections.
For phone carriers, 5G represents the holy grail of mobile communications. Using the fast wireless speeds, digital services like autonomous cars and delivery drones could tap into almost instant mobile networks. And almost all of the devices needed for everyday life — from refrigerators to industrial machinery — may be connected through the technology.
For now, 5G is being tested at universities and by carriers over limited areas. AT&T and Ericsson recently demonstrated the network technology working in Austin, while Verizon has done 5G tests in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Texas. Other carriers, particularly in South Korea and Japan, are also conducting trials of the new technology, and governments plan to use events like the 2018 World Cup in Russia to demonstrate their own 5G pilots.
"It's the million-dollar question: What will 5G look like?" said Ulf Ewaldsson, chief strategy and technology officer for Ericsson, the telecommunications equipment maker.
5G has some inherent limitations. For large carriers like AT&T and Verizon, it may be economically feasible to deploy 5G only in the densest cities like New York and San Francisco.
Robert Heath, a professor at the University of Texas who wrote a book about 5G, said that millimeter wave, a variant of 5G that carriers are testing, can transfer large chunks of data very fast. But the big chunks of data have a very short wavelength, and the technology can only cover short distances. The technology does not penetrate buildings very well, he said.
"It's not as useful as a technology for covering really large areas," he said. "It's a perfectly fine technology for hundreds of meters."
5G would also be difficult to spread because what is known as the millimeter wave technology transmits data at shorter distances. That means AT&T would need to install a larger number of networks throughout the country to cover it in 5G. Dave Burstein, the editor of DSL Prime, a telecommunications newsletter, estimates AT&T would need around a million 5G networks nationwide, up from 70,000 cell sites it now operates.
"It's impossible to have a widespread network that quickly," Mr. Burstein said about AT&T's prediction of 5G competing with cable operators by 2021.
Questions remain about what should be in 5G's technical standards so that companies' worldwide networks can talk to one another. That has involved tense late-night negotiations among telecommunications companies worldwide over what type of radio waves 5G technology should use, among other complicated global agreements. These talks may delay the significant deployment of 5G networks until well into the next decade.
John Donovan, AT&T's chief strategy officer, said in an interview this year that the company was not concerned about rivals' efforts to develop 5G and that he was positive about the technology's potential.
"There are a lot of factors that are now pushing the technology," he said.
But Mr. Moffett wondered how buying Time Warner would help AT&T achieve its 5G ambitions. The load of debt that AT&T will take on by acquiring Time Warner could hinder investment in the network technology, he said.
"If you're trying to curry favor in Washington and get a deal sold, the one thing you can dangle in front of regulators is competition," he said. "But the obvious weak point in the argument is it's not clear how owning Time Warner helps AT&T deploy more 5G."
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