How will 5G change the world?

While there’s been talk for some time about the dif­fer­ence the next gen­er­a­tion of mobile tech­nol­o­gy is like­ly to make to the way we live, it has been unclear just how 5G will change the world.

Accord­ing to Mark Melling, 5G lead and head of Ver­i­zon Media’s brand­ed con­tent agency RYOT Stu­dio, the shift cen­tres on 5G’s abil­i­ty to “super­charge tech­nolo­gies, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR), to make them avail­able for mass con­sump­tion”.

This sce­nario is pos­si­ble because not only are con­nec­tion speeds esti­mat­ed to be between ten and one hun­dred times faster than 4G’s, but more data can also be trans­mit­ted across the net­work with min­i­mal delay. Reli­a­bil­i­ty is like­wise much greater as con­nec­tions do not drop out.

As a result, it becomes fea­si­ble to move much of the pro­cess­ing cur­rent­ly under­tak­en by indi­vid­ual devices into the cloud, which in turn enables the cre­ation of a whole new set of rich­er appli­ca­tions and dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences.

Futur­ist Steve Brown, who found­ed con­sul­tan­cy Pos­si­bil­i­ty and Pur­pose, explains: “We can use this tech­nol­o­gy to opti­mise traf­fic flow in our cities, improve the way we grow crops on farms and reimag­ine health­care, edu­ca­tion and the way our sup­ply chains oper­ate. While many tech­nolo­gies – AI, inter­net of things sen­sors, robot­ics, AR and oth­ers – will be part of this trans­for­ma­tion, at the heart of all this change will be the 5G net­work that con­nects every­thing togeth­er.”

How 5G will change the world

As to how exact­ly 5G will change the world in day-to day terms, Melling believes it will enable the “true inter­ac­tion of the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal worlds in real time”.

In his view, we cur­rent­ly expe­ri­ence the two worlds as being quite sep­a­rate, but in future he expects the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the phys­i­cal world to result in their merg­er. It’s a process that was accel­er­at­ed ear­li­er this year when social media giant Face­book and Poké­mon GO devel­op­er Niantic both pur­chased AR star­tups to devel­op 3D maps of the phys­i­cal world.

“Although we don’t have a dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the world today, once we do, we could put on our AR glass­es, say we want to find a cer­tain build­ing and the glass­es would show us where it is, what it looks like, share its his­to­ry and car­bon foot­print, and also take us there,” says Melling. “Some of this is pos­si­ble now to a cer­tain extent, but 5G will remove the fric­tion points by mov­ing data back and forth much more quick­ly.”

If AI is added to the mix, it becomes pos­si­ble to process huge amounts of data in the cloud in real time, enabling auto­mat­ic alerts to be sent to local author­i­ty waste dis­pos­al trucks telling them full rub­bish bins require emp­ty­ing, for instance. Con­nect­ed cars would also be able to talk to a city’s park­ing sys­tem, locate and book the near­est free space, and nav­i­gate the dri­ver direct­ly to it.

Although many of the more sophis­ti­cat­ed use-cas­es are unlike­ly to become real­i­ty for anoth­er five to ten years, 5G’s main­stream adop­tion in the major cities of advanced economies, such as the UK and Amer­i­ca, should occur over the next three or four, Bill Ray, Gartner’s UK senior direc­tor ana­lyst for 5G, pre­dicts.

3 ways 5G will change the world

1. Healthcare

Mr Brown believes 5G net­works will “ush­er in a new era of remote care”. Sim­ple home-based devices will mon­i­tor and auto­mat­i­cal­ly man­age the health of peo­ple liv­ing with chron­ic con­di­tions, such as dia­betes. Wear­able devices will alert those in the wider pop­u­la­tion if any health anom­alies are detect­ed, facil­i­tat­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with doc­tors based on the data they gath­er.

Fur­ther down the line, 3D X‑rays will become com­mon­place, while per­form­ing pre­ci­sion robot­ic surgery on peo­ple in rur­al areas from a remote hos­pi­tal will become pos­si­ble. 5G-con­nect­ed ambu­lances will inter­act with the local traf­fic net­work in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion to set traf­fic lights and inform oth­er motorists of their loca­tion, there­by ensur­ing their path is clear.

2.Retail

5G will change the world of retail in future by pro­vid­ing shop­pers with “a far more per­son­alised expe­ri­ence”, says Mr Ray. 5G-enabled AR and VR-based sys­tems will enable con­sumers to view how a piece of fur­ni­ture would look in their liv­ing room or an item of cloth­ing on their bod­ies – all in 3D – and to ask for alter­na­tives using voice com­mands or ges­tures.

In-store, sim­ply point­ing their ‘phone at a food shelf will bring up a list of prod­uct ingre­di­ents so they can estab­lish which ones are eth­i­cal­ly-sourced and which are nut-free.

In around 15 years’ time though, Guiller­mo Pedra­ja head of net­works, 5G and IOT at IT ser­vices provider NTT Data UK, fore­casts that, rather than cus­tomers dri­ving to the super­mar­ket them­selves, self-dri­ving shop­ping carts will ful­fil their orders and nego­ti­ate traf­fic sys­tems to deliv­er goods to their home.

3. Entertainment

There will be big shifts in the worlds of enter­tain­ment and sport as con­tent moves from a 2D to 3D for­mat and becomes increas­ing­ly inter­ac­tive, believes Mr Melling.

Movies and TV shows will migrate from green screens to smart stages and vir­tu­al sets, cre­at­ed on the same plat­forms as today’s com­put­er games. Live sports events, mean­while, will be filmed using 3D cam­eras.

This means that, in future, enter­tain­ment will become increas­ing­ly inter­ac­tive, real-time and view­able from 360 degrees. In oth­er words, view­ers will be able to watch film and shows from inside the set and move around inside it, view­ing the action from dif­fer­ent angles and inter­act­ing with the char­ac­ters, not as an avatar but as a pho­to-real ver­sion of them­selves.

“The speed and amount of data 5G can deal with at any giv­en time offers a huge step up in terms of pro­vid­ing rich­er, more inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences,” Mr Melling con­cludes.