Analysts agree 5G will significantly increase bandwidth and open up vast opportunities for businesses that do more than just dip in a toe to test the waters. But right now, enterprises in all industries are massing on 5G shores, anxiously eyeing one another to see who will be among the first to take the 5G plunge.
Of course, it’s not as easy as jumping in with both feet — limited 5G deployments have only started to come online, and 5G-enabled equipment is just now entering the marketplace. But 5G definitely on its way, and forward-looking executive teams are dedicating significant resources to determine what course their enterprise should plot to navigate the rising 5G waters.
Technology is fundamentally changing the way we interact with the world around us, with innovations like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), the Internet of Things (IoT), predictive analytics and more, growing increasingly more robust by the day. These changes are beginning to play out across every vertical, from entertainment to financial services to healthcare. It will be the widespread deployment of 5G, however, that will provide the real tipping point.
As Alex Woodie says in his recent Datanami article:
“The current 4G networks currently deliver around 4-12 megabits per second (Mbps) of bandwidth… The new 5G specifications that are under consideration offer significantly higher data speeds. For example, the ITU IMT-2020 specification calls for speeds up to 20 Gbps, which is more than 2,000 times faster than current 4G specs.”
Such dramatic increases in speed, wherever they actually net out, mean drastic reductions in latency, which will allow businesses to provide their customers with data-rich, immersive experiences that have the potential to substantially raise quality of life in ways we have never seen.
We have heard innumerable accounts of autonomous vehicle and AR and VR proof-of-concept initiatives, but many less heralded (but equally game-changing) 5G experiments are underway around the world. In Austin, for example, AT&T and Samsung are partnering to create what they describe as “America’s first manufacturing-focused 5G Innovation Zone,” offering a glimpse into the future of 5G-enabled “smart factories.”
Whether we are talking about providers of media and entertainment or telemedicine, today’s enterprises “now must move efficiently across multiple clouds and cloud platforms for processing, networking, colocation and content delivery,” according to AT&T. The massive data processing at the cornerstone of 5G will require enterprises to focus on edge computing in order to maximize efficiency.
Contact us to learn how Netrality’s interconnected data centers at the edge enable 5G for enterprises.
