The evolution of 5G, the latest generation of cellular mobile communication, will undoubtedly have a deep influence on how these 5G superfast services are delivered to the consumer. Among the potential benefits are high data rates, energy savings, reduced latency, higher system capacity, and cost reductions.
One of the domains 5G has the potential to transform in a huge way is IoT, the Internet of Things industry. This post covers as to how large an influence will it be, and in what manner can 5G help unleash the tremendous potential that IoT has for businesses as well as customers?
Slow Rollout
5G won’t be here overnight; its broad availability simply not instantly feasible. The deployment of 5G will take place gradually from 2020 onwards, and it might take the next four to five years to experience full-scale 5G deployment worldwide.
Paul Bevan, research director for IT Infrastructure at advisory and consulting firm Bloor, feels that 5G adoption will be patchy to begin with. “By 2025 some verticals or use cases may have just crossed the chasm, but many will still be in the visionary phase,” he said.
For large enterprises, 5G will be a technology catalyst and not a solution in itself as such. Numerous vertical industry use cases, such as big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, robotics, etc. have already been suggested and are under investigation at the moment.
Every industry will have different needs when it comes to data speed, rate, latency, coverage, density, reliability, and location accuracy. The rate of 5G’s rollout and enterprise adoption will largely depend on the rate at which the necessary 5G capabilities are delivered and the apparent business value of the use cases.
In addition, 5G’s rollout will be impacted by several major economic factors. Telecom companies are likely to face considerable capital investment over the next few years on top of their already massive investments in 4G.
Understanding the roadmap to productive revenue and the collaborations necessary to do so will determine the pace of 5G deployment around the world as well as the structure of the supply side market.
Moreover, telecom companies will also look for new tools and techniques to lessen both the capital as well as the operating costs of upcoming 5G networks.
These include, but are not limited to, software-defined networking (SDN), automated operations at the edge, Open Compute Project (OCP) hardware configurations, and network function virtualization (NFV).
Impact on IoT
How 5G will impact IoT depends on how you define IoT and whether your definition includes phones, Bevan said. It’s likely that video streaming, mobile online gaming, and augmented and virtual reality will be the early targets of 5G.
Most business-focused IoT will take place without 5G requirement, or is already doing well with the current 4G network. However, it is in areas that need low latency like autonomous vehicles or upcoming advanced remote robotic surgery will clearly count on 5G to change the game.
For businesses, the biggest impact of 5G will be in terms of how efficiently 5G will handle extremely large data volumes at high transaction rates from mobile and/or remote locations. The potential to collect data from remote sensors, transmit it to extensive data centers, and apply both machine learning & artificial intelligence as well as data science techniques to enable real-time analysis is one aspect where businesses are likely to see the massive returns by IoTization.
One segment of 5G IoT use cases, as classified under the URLLC, i.e. ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), will build up gradually throughout the 2020s.
These services will need distributed 5G investments in terms of core and edge computing, which is located near the end-points.
Telecom enterprises will be able to customize network connectivity for certain vertical applications by providing tailored service-level agreements (SLAs). And that’s where 5G will start to flex its impactful era-defining muscles.
5G’s core strength will be its ability to cater to not just the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) – IoT use case – which relates to offering a low-cost alternative to connect devices with low requirements from the network — but it concurrently caters to the IoT use cases falling into the URLLC segment, as well.
It is not unreal to envision a business which might be having requirements for both network the scenarios and, therefore, providing both from a converged, singular architecture could get very fascinating. It will make sense from simplicity to cost-reduction point of view.
Industry Breakdown
5G deployment and IoT will affect some industries more than others. The Internet of Things can turn out to be a cornerstone for driving digital transformation, which will enable new business models powered by new data streams and widespread devices simultaneously.
For example, for the healthcare industry, IoT and 5G could contribute to enhancing the wellbeing of people, right from predicting an individual’s potential health problems and managing timely medical interventions. For example, remote robotic surgery could enhance patient outcomes along with reducing medical expenses.
In integrated supply chains and the manufacturing industry, these upcoming technologies will facilitate automation and collaboration of manufacturing operations across organizationally and geographically dispersed units.
This will be successful through connected factories, increasing agility, and reducing costs.
In public sectors, including municipal governments, IoT and 5G could help hasten the development and organization of smart cities. Generally, 5G technology for IoT will benefit all industries, since it will enable them to independently design or co-design – through a service provider – hybrid networks on the basis of their unique needs in terms of reliability, latency, and capacity.
IoT Without 5G
Only that 5G has the potential to enhance certain aspects of IoT doesn’t mean the era-defining IoT will be dependent on wireless network capabilities of 5G. “It needs to be stressed that not all IoT devices need 5G,” Bevan said. “Probably less than half of all the data generated by IoT devices will need to be transferred to centralized data centers.”
Satellite communication needs to consider as well, for rural areas and less densely populated regions in particular, and also in situations or use cases where location accuracy of assets in motion is vital.