Almost every month there is a new 5G milestone passed, and The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) have reported recently that the number of announced 5G devices passed the 400 mark worldwide for the first time. With spectrum auctions, network deployments and service launches also continuing apace, all the indicators are that 5G is coming – and it is coming to revolutionize the user experience.
But one question still remains for many people: what makes 5G so special and different from the previous generations of network?
An easy way of looking at this question is to see 5G as having three specific benefits. Within this article we will discuss what they are and most importantly, what they enable.
The first benefit: More bandwidth
Through high bandwidth, 5G will enable a faster internet experience. More bandwidth means that you'll receive more data at the same time which results in a faster experience. As our CEO Tom Cronk says “you'd be able to stream your video at higher rates and wait less time for the videos to download. In that sense mobile broadband will get faster and faster.”
According to Cisco, by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic. It’s little surprise then that 5G’s better bandwidth is playing a crucial role in the industry. Yet video is only one of the applications that could thrive with more bandwidth.
However, as Tom says “5G is much more than that”. 5G has two other key benefits.
The second benefit: Less Delay
Through ultra-low latency connectivity provided by solutions such as ours, users will face less delay which will be a game changer for everything from Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications and sensor networks to video and eSports.
But ultra-low latency is also important in other industries.
In the case of autonomous vehicles ultra-low latency connectivity is a critical safety requirement. Or as Tom puts it: “When we’re all one day driving around in our autonomous vehicles, what's really important is that the connectivity is instant and robust, there cannot be any delay in message passing between one vehicle and another.”
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The third benefit: More devices
With 5G, more devices will be connected than ever before. 5G is at the very centre of the IoT revolution that is coming.
“The internet of things, where everything is connected to everything and those things all communicate, is going to necessitate billions of devices being connected around the globe. And that means these networks need to scale at a rate that they've never scaled before,” Cronk explains.
These three advantages of 5G – more bandwidth, less delay, more connected devices – combined with robust systems to deliver QoS, all have a role to play in delivering the end user experience that 5G promises.
However, this does not come without new challenges.
As Tom summarises:
A 5G network will need the ability to be one or two, or all of these things at the same time, from the same physical hardware. And that is encapsulated in virtualisation where the networks that are being now designed and eventually rolled out for 5G, are needing to be much, much more flexible and ultimately having much more software running.
To find out more about how AccelerComm is helping the 5G ecosystem to innovate and deliver, please get in touch.
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