A very large part of it is Marketing people dying to have something new to sell people. LTE has reached market saturation, so 5G is the only thing they can use to sell people new phones and new data plans. They don’t care that they have setup this perverse system where they sell people on faster speeds, but then add data caps to deter them from using it.
A less sinister take might be that faster speeds allow each device to get off the air faster, enabling more devices to be used in the same area. But that’s mostly a technical solution and I highly doubt the advantages rise to the level that the Business side has started pushing it. Salespeople just see the commissions.
> "Marketing people dying to have something new to sell people"
Not just marketing people. Everyone at companies making the equipment (Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei), the chipsets (Qualcomm), and rolling out the networks (e.g., AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint) wants a piece of the pie.
A less sinister take might be that faster speeds allow each device to get off the air faster, enabling more devices to be used in the same area. But that’s mostly a technical solution and I highly doubt the advantages rise to the level that the Business side has started pushing it. Salespeople just see the commissions.