Virtual-reality gaming, sports broadcasting, VR holographic calling, and many other sleek applications that need 5G’s ultra-high bandwidth and low latency have all been touted. While such consumer services are remarkable, the future of 5G lies solely on the shoulders of businesses. Businesses will not only drive much of the 5G application innovation in the coming years, but their purchasing power will allow carriers around the world to recoup the hundreds of billions of dollars they’ve spent on the 5G spectrum and network upgrades.
Driving a range of Internet of Things applications is the most significant 5G opportunity. We’ve been hearing corporations and organizations from all industries talk about the promise of IoT sensors on all kinds of equipment and devices to gather data, connecting them through wireless networks.
“Industrial IoT” applications:
- Notifying engineers when a jet engine component, turbine compressor, or railway wheel is ready to break.
- Tracking assets such as shipping containers, factory inventories, and even people across great distances.
- Monitoring consumer driving habits to adjust insurance rates.
However, a critical barrier to the widespread adoption of such applications has been the lack of reliable, ubiquitous, and cost-effective communication. Not every sensor-enabled machine, component, wearable, car, appliance, or other “IIoT” device can be connected to a high-speed network, especially in rural regions. Then there’s 5G. 5G networks allow large machine-type communications and offer speeds similar to fiber and at least 10x faster than previous-generation wireless networks with a fraction of the latency. As a result, they make it feasible for many IoT devices to interact with and decision-makers at a central level. Additionally, 5G networks are significantly less expensive to construct and deploy than fiber networks.
Thanks to 5G’s renowned “network slicing” capabilities, enterprise clients may carve out their logical networks in software to suit specific applications. The Telecom Council’s most recent event on 5G Ran (https://wca.org/event/telecom-council-innovation-review-on-5g-ran/) demonstrated that cloud computing had advanced significantly (https://wca.org/rakuten-sells-5g-technology-to-german-telecommunications-company-1and1/),(https://wca.org/orange-and-nokia-are-expanding-industrial-5g-projects-with-sncf-and-schneider-electric-in-france/) and (https://wca.org/verizon-business-launches-5g-private-network-for-enterprise-public-sector/). These are just a few instances of developing a private cloud and 5G capabilities.
According to Ericsson, by the end of 2025, there will be 2.6 billion 5G customers, accounting for 65 percent of the worldwide population and 45 percent of overall mobile data traffic. One of the numerous benefits of 5G is increased productivity and the creation of new industries.