For several years now, wireless carriers have been busy telling anybody who’d listen that fifth-generation (5G) wireless will be a game-changing broadband revolution. Time and time again, their marketing departments have breathlessly insisted that everything from smart cities to next-gen medical care will only be possible through the miracle of 5G connections.

“Going from 4G to 5G is like going from black and white to color TV,” recently proclaimed Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure while trying to sell the company’s recently-proposed merger with T-Mobile. “It’s a seismic shift—one that only the combined company can unlock nationwide to fuel the next wave of mobile innovation.”

But while 5G will be a natural, evolutionary step forward for wireless, it’s far from the earth-rattling societal transformation we’re being promised.

“5G” is really just a collection of emerging antenna and core network technologies that will make wireless networks faster, more efficient, with lower latencies. But at the end of the day the “5G revolution” is really just a slightly-better version of the 4G LTE networks you’re already familiar with. Actual commercial deployment and handset availability isn’t expected until 2020 or later.

Buried beneath the hype rests a growing sense that wireless carriers are aggressively over-selling the technology’s potential.

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