5G sticks out as a buzzword. It’s the loud person at a party that you haven’t had a chance to meet fully. There is still uncertainty with what all the fuss is about. You hear side comments that “5G is pretty much the same as it was for 3G to 4G”, or futuristic rumours of how it will revolutionize everything we do. It’s quite polar. Instead of standing from a distance, it’s time to get more acquainted.
We should be critical about our literacy towards 5G and technology, as our insight shapes our businesses’ insights. When technology is something that impacts our lives, we should all understand enough to have our own say.
Exploring What 5G Could Be
Here’s what we know for sure about 5G. It’s a new global wireless communication standard – complete with faster data rates, efficiency, and capacity. You’ll be able to stream 4K video from your phone, or view responsive AR/VR live experiences. Mobile user experiences and devices are now freed from a bottleneck for data collection and processing. A wider variety of products (IoT with wearables, drones, and also media experiences) can also utilize 5G and be viable to market.
The push for 5G and business cases are still in development though. On the business facing side, data collection, AI usage, and near real-time data processing will be benefitted. We can expect factory production and retail logistics to gain from 5G connected sensors and predictive analytics. As richer data is being enabled by 5G, the field of marketing and advertising gets increasingly personalized and interactive.
Current Limitations to 5G
Okay, well if there’s so much potential, why don’t we start adding 5G to everything?
“Hype” is louder than ever for the usage of 5G, with the AI-of-Things as a futuristic vision for self-driving cars and smart cities. There is a problem though. Density is a huge consideration for the US and Canada. The barrier to widespread usage is the high expenditure required for carriers to have a network that performs well enough for us to see real benefit in 5G over existing 4G LTE and 3G service.
On one hand, we have technical advancement and potential, but what about market demand? What does it take to convince consumers to pay more, or buy a 5G capable device to make the switch? This is a chicken-or-the-egg situation – it takes widespread 5G deployment for more use cases and products to be available, but it’s difficult until consumer buy-in for 5G exists for products.
We’ll get a better feel for 5G around the corner. It’s also expected that there will be 2.8 billion subscriptions of 5G service by the end of 2025. Businesses can expect increased scalability of new products and services as 5G becomes more accessible. We can be optimistic about what 5G will have to offer, but the key is in proving the potential in 5G use cases.
Interested in learning more about 5G and its applications?
Here is The Voice of 5G podcast by Ericsson, a company leading the forefront of 5G communication technology.
5G is an evolution in communication. Chatnels, the AI-powered chat platform, is an evolution for workflow, used in Safe Wait to reduce patient waiting room contact in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Contact us to get started with Chatnels.
