By now, almost every country has a plan for a 5G rollout over the next few years, with countries like China, the US and South Korea in the lead, according to Business Insider Intelligence’s Global 5G Landscape. Through COVID-19 and the resulting global pandemic, we were able to see the real benefits of connectivity in maintaining vital processes and relations and overcoming the (social) distance, not only in our work environment, but also in our economy and our private lives. While the role of technologies enabling these opportunities became more visible, we asked ourselves questions like “What would be different, if 5G was already up and running on a broad scale?”
How does 5G help us to keep and improve performance?
5G will have a significant impact on many key areas of our lives – education, medicine, work, etc. and, of course, on our economy. Because its bandwidth and low latencies allows for real time transmissions of big amounts of data, from a business perspective 5G will bring a new industrial revolution, Industry 4.0. companies will be able to build their own private 5G network on their premises and use these capabilities to automate production with IoT devices (Internet of Things), robots and sensors (smart factories), which will help increase productivity, self-monitoring, improve processes and shorten time-to-market spans. Those changes will impact every part of a business, from production to logistics and supply chain management, because 5G allows us to track progress and shipments in real-time, reducing downtimes and waits and minimaxing paperwork. 5G and Industry 4.0 are drivers for major shifts, promoting interconnectivity, decentralised decisions, cognitive computing etc.
The role of the people in this transformation will evolve to managing, controlling and repairing the connected devices in the production facilities. This would allow us to work remotely and from a greater distance, keeping the production running without being confined to a fixed workspace.
How would 5G amplify the role of connections in our work and lives?
The one thing that made the internet so impactful is the way it allowed people to connect with each other, no matter where they are around the globe – both for business and private matters. 5G is taking this connection even further, enabling us to work closely with not even minor delays and performing from distance activities that were not possible before, such as virtual classes, remote medical exams or surgery, big data transmission etc. In challenging times, the internet allows us to stay connected and keep working remotely while maintaining processes and productivity. The pandemic we are experiencing is a force majeure global event that has shown us we might see technical difficulties and connection issues when the whole world moved their activities online. 5G would be a solution to provide a stable, more reliable connection. Its bandwidth and increased data transmission rate would make it possible to host and attend online classes with a huge amount of people, manage whole factories and companies from a distance or simply staying connected with our family and friends. In short, 5G would allow us to stay at home in case we have to and still put our full potential to the use without compromising our quality of work or being held back by overloaded servers and bad connections. 5G will also affect our way of live with smart cities opportunities that will enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, while allowing us to reduce costs and resource consumption and to increase contact between citizens and authorities.
In general, this technology will unlock further opportunities for human creativity and improvement of quality of life through new medical, educational and personal development forms.
What new opportunities does 5G offer?
Self-driving, autonomous cars, holograms and remote surgery have been a science-fiction narrative for a long time. In reality, we are not quite there yet, but 5G will bring us a big step closer. Autonomous driving requires car-to-car communication and real-time data transmissions with response times of 1 ms and lower. These low latencies can only be accomplished through 5G networks.
Our healthcare system could also benefit strongly from 5G. Hospitals produce huge amounts of sensible data every day and technologies like Virtual and Augmented Reality, AI and Machine Learning could be used to scan X-rays and other files for diseases. Real-time data transmission and low latencies would even allow for operations being performed from a distance, making patient care and hospital capacities more resilient and safe for healthcare workers.
5G will also improve machine-to-machine communication, making Smart Cities a reality. From managing energy and water supply to real-time traffic information and smart lighting, 5G can make cities more intelligent, sustainable and improve the quality of life for its citizens.
With an ever-growing world population, food and water supply will gain importance over the next few years. The agricultural sector is challenged with producing more food, while at the same time reducing waste and production cost to archive there goals, from sensors, drones and connected devices providing real-time data about livestock, weather and crops on the field, to smart greenhouses that manage irrigation and monitor the produce quality.
What risks come with the broad scale deployment of 5G?
With great promises also come great risks. While companies, private households and our societies will benefit from incredibly fast data transmission rates and increase bandwidth and all new opportunities 5G brings, so might hackers and cyber criminals. According to a study by BPI Network, 94% of industry experts expect security challenges to escalate with 5G. With the use of IoT devises in high-risk industries, for example surgeon robots and automated vehicles, the threats by hackers don’t just concern our data anymore. 5G will therefore pose a challenge for cybersecurity to make sure our data is safe. However, 5G stakeholders are considering this and working in parallel to provide secure connections.
Devices will be forced to depending on the available connection. That means devices have to deal with the vulnerabilities and challenges that were not addressed in previous networks. Many countries also fear that some network infrastructure providers might install a “backdoor” to gain access to critical data. Some countries have already implemented stricter ruling for critical parts of their 5G infrastructure.
What do we need in order to make the promises of 5G a reality?
In order to unlock the full 5G-potential, we need an infrastructure to sustain its demands. Unlike other networks in the past, 5G networks don’t have to be built from scratch. It is more about adding new components to already existing infrastructure. 5G waves are very short. Which means networks have to be densified – at the heart of the 5G infrastructure are fibre connections. No other known medium has the capacities that fibre brings to the table and those capacities are vital to achieve the transmission rates, low latencies and bandwidths of 5G.
When it comes to 5G deployment, we still have a long way to go and many challenges lying ahead. The installation costs for 5G infrastructure are still very high and it will take time and investments to fully leverage the promises and opportunities 5G offers. However, once get there, we will be able to enjoy the numerous possibilities 5G has to offer.
