You’ve probably heard all the hype surrounding 5G at the moment – and some big numbers are grabbing a lot of attention. Those of us in the world of tech and telco certainly find them fascinating, but for the wider business community, what do 5G’s vital statistics really mean?
Scott Petty, Chief Digital & Information Officer from Vodafone, one of our strategic partners, explains why 5G is much more than a numbers game and translates milliseconds and megabits into benefits we can all get excited about.
5G can open up new business models for you.
5G brings new ways to connect that can improve not only productivity and responsiveness but also competitiveness. Powering industrial AR, VR IoT sensors and robotics, 5G enables virtual connections and new ways to manage operations, stay ahead of the competition and generally never miss a beat.
If you’re a gamer, you’ll call it lag. In business we experience latency as responsiveness. If you regularly suffer from slow network speeds, insufficient bandwidth or peak-traffic bottlenecks, you’ll know what we mean. 5G’s speed and capacity overcomes all these problems, cutting response time down to just 1 millisecond (compared to 50 milliseconds with 4G).
Forty-nine milliseconds might not sound like much, but in fact, those milliseconds will expand the Internet of Things (IoT) – and that’s a transformative opportunity for businesses in every sector.
5G-enabled IoT will allow real-time responsiveness, which opens-up huge opportunities for commercial use – from driverless vehicles, drones, artificial intelligence, robotics and remote-controlled machinery, and virtual and augmented reality. Businesses at the forefront of this tech can gain a strong competitive edge.
The pace of business will pick up with 5G, making it possible for every aspect of your operations to move faster, delivering instant, wireless connection between all your machines and devices. It’ll feel like the first-time connectivity is actually keeping up with business.
You’ve heard that with 5G, we’ll be able to download an entire HD film (yes, even Avengers Endgame) in seconds. But what does that mean for your business productivity? Well, hopefully it won’t mean Marvel movies at work, but it will mean waiting time becomes a thing of the past.
Getting hold of large files not only leaves us staring at our screens for minutes that feel like hours, but those minutes disrupt our flow for much longer. With blink-of-an-eye downloads, we’ll be able to get files and keep working without interruption, share entire media-rich projects on our phones, or stream video without buffering.
5G’s low latency translates as business without disruption, allowing you to collaborate in real-time with your customers and react to requests instantly. And 5G’s high bandwidth will mean you’ll stay connected and responsive even in crowded areas.
We all know the pain of a poor connection in a video conference. Meetings like these sap our time and make us look unprofessional – and at the moment there’s not much of a clear alternative. When those calls are with customers, prospects or investors, the stakes are even higher.
With 5G we’ll be able to make and receive calls and use data without interrupting download speed; we’ll get clearer calls with less background noise; video conferencing will get slicker too, with high quality, pixellation-free images, and less buffering.
Connecting, sharing, and engaging with our customers will become as easy and natural as face-to-face.
In the near future, 5G will offer faster speeds than you’ve experienced on the move before. You’ll be able to instantly respond to anyone, anywhere – whether you’re at home, the airport or on the commute, and access the benefits of bandwidth-hungry tech like AR and VR in new and exciting ways.
In the past few years, employee demand for flexible and remote working has steadily grown into employee expectation. More and more businesses have developed policies and practices that allow people to work away from the office.
Hybrid working is rapidly becoming mainstream and, when technology allows it, communication with remote teams will feel seamless.
With 5G, businesses will have constant unbroken access to a fast, reliable internet connection. AR and VR technologies will take advantage of 5G’s added bandwidth and make remote-meeting participants feel as if they’re in the same room, making presentations more engaging and interactive.
Network slicing is how enterprise customers will be able to squeeze every drop of value out of 5G. It’s a way of dividing a single physical network connection into separate virtual ‘slices’ for specific services or channels – allocating the appropriate amount of resources to each slice.
For example, a network slice dedicated to IoT devices could provide high availability, high data rate and enhanced latency. A different network slice for ePOS transactions could offer high throughput, quick data and low latency.
This basically gives businesses control over own their own private 5G network, precisely set up according to its specific business needs. 5G will certainly have much greater capacity, but it will also use that space more intelligently, assigning only the resources necessary for a particular service or channel.
We’re in the early days of a 5G revolution.
Let’s be clear about expectations though: migration to 5G will be an evolution. Some features will be implemented on upgraded 4G networks in a process referred to as 4G Evolution (Evo).
5G devices are now in the mainstream and by 2025, we should see about 50 percent network coverage according to the GSMA.
Talk to us today to discuss how 5G can revolutionise the way your business operates. Alternatively, if you need further information on what 5G is all about, we have all your 5G questions answered here.