on Jan 14, 2019With the CES 2019 show now in the history books, if you didn't see or hear the expression 5G in every possible corner it would be a grand surprise. 5G everything seemed to be everywhere at CES with the Telecom operators pitching new services and capabilities from their networks for both business and consumer users such as connected cars, autonomous cars, virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive advanced gaming, and faster 4k and 8k quality video that can be consumed in multiple streaming methods and ways. Additionally, services for digital health, connected business, connected home, all seem to be pervasive but forthcoming offerings in the new 5G future. One key aspect that unifies all of the use cases is the aspect of 'real-time' access to services that are brought to life from the 'nuts and bolts' of 5G such as edge computing, small cells, IoT sensors, and most importantly, analytics and the data multiverse that will form the digital currency of the connected services offerings.
As real-time access to data becomes a necessary element for life-enabling digital services, it becomes more clear that secure, well managed networks and telecom infrastructure are also increasingly necessary to have in non-stop, critical operations that have limitless and in some cases safety critical requirements beyond 'carrier grade'. One unique aspect that Hitachi Vantara offers is a composable 'semi-commodity' virtualized data platform that provides Digital Services Providers the ability to leverage pervasive data availability via advanced AI and ML driven smart elastic infrastructure.
The promise of a great future for smart cities and smart homes begins with original layers of data access and real-time services from 5G networks and related edge/location based dynamic access when and where is needed.
What do you see are some of the new services that 5G will bring to daily life as a consumer and a business user?
What are the greatest challenges in 5G rollout and what are the delays related to?
Do you see a need for 5G or does 4G LTE provide the access you need?
Interested to hear feedback on these topics.
/Shane
The promised properties of 5G for massive scale connectivity (IoT), very low latency and very high bandwidth (order of scale vs 4G) will bring about a very different real time, immersive experience to the users as well as enabling many new use cases and business models. If it delivers on the technical capabilities, it has the potential to impact our daily lives in the same way as the mobile phone and the internet with significant changes in social and business behaviours.
Challenges will be to evolve core network to virtualised with technologies as SDN and NFV, that will enable logical networks to be formed in real time to connect to different edge devices depending on QoS requirements. This will require dynamic orchestration of logical networks with feedback loop for constant adjustment of configuration parameters. And final point is the radio interface, it is a very optimistic target 20Gbps download speeds, however real world environment constraints will be a challenge.