From Driverless Cars To Holographic Ads, How 5G Will Roll Out And Disrupt Our Life Very Soon

As fast moving as the world of technology appears to be, very seldom does it experience a transformation at the scale at which is being heralded with the imminent rollout of 5G connectivity.

Internet of Things, smart cities, driverless cars, insanely fast connectivity speeds, 5G will bring us all that and more, as its rollout starts picking some much needed momentum through 2019.

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To find out more about 5G's rollout, the challenges and opportunities involved, I spoke to people in the know from Infosys, Intel, Kaspersky, Qualcomm, Verizon, and Symantec to get their thoughts on the matter.

5G will enable consumers

According to Jim Cathey, Senior Vice President & President, Asia Pacific & India, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, "5G will not only deliver faster, better mobile broadband services compared to 4G LTE, but it will also expand into new service areas, such as mission-critical communications and connecting the massive IoT."

Not just that, but Jim Cathey says, "5G will provide much more network capacity by expanding into new spectrum, such as millimetre wave (mmWave), and deliver much lower latency for a quicker immediate response, and an overall more uniform user experience so that the data rates stay consistently high even when users are moving around."

"5G will also support direct communications that will allow cars to communicate with each other directly for improved road safety," says Jim. "This mode of operation can operate without dependency or reliance on the cellular network."

Drive newer ways to consume information...

Media consumption will explode through the roof with the arrival of 5G services, according to Jonathan Wood, Senior Director Ecosystem and Business Development Advanced Technologies Group at Intel.

"Already video is the largest driver of data usage on devices currently, and that's only going to explode with 5G," says Jonathan Wood. "This will in turn drive digital advertising, taking advantage of cellular network to give people location-based discounts, for example. Overall, provide information and experience that improves the life and quality of people by giving them newer accessible points for them to consume that information -- like an interactive holograph, for instance, alongside traditional banner advertising."

... in India, too

Raja Shah, Vice President and Industry Head for Energy, Communications, Utilities and Services for Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa at Infosys believes 5G will accelerate the development of lot of Indian sectors.

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"5G can be used to create sustainable farming solution to improve productivity of food corps," says Raja Shah. "Low latency and high throughput will bring VR & AR applications from lab to life for the end user at any part of the world e.g. you could watch an IPL game sitting at home and choose any location in the stadium from where you would like to view the game. Mobile health and remote medical diagnosis and surgery would be possible; drone based delivery will see the light of day."

Governments will be more effective

According to Robert Le Busque, Regional Managing Director, Australia, New Zealand and India, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, 5G will make sure governments will govern better, providing essential healthcare benefits like never before.

"Real-time data transmission will promote public safety and security by giving first responders and others vital information about incidents, and whether personnel are en-route or on site," says Robert Le Busque. "It will also improve security monitoring and smart lighting to help create safer streets."

"Government (federal, state, and local) 5G's blazing network speeds and low latency will spark unprecedented advancements in healthcare, transportation, safety, education and other areas we can't even think of right now. 5G will help cut congestion by monitoring and controlling traffic lights; alerting drivers of traffic delays; and providing smart parking solutions that identify available spaces. It will help smart cities manage energy and control carbon emissions by monitoring buildings' HVAC and lighting systems. It will also improve water and power management by providing utility companies with analytics on supply and demand or system waster," he says.

There's the opportunity to lower health care costs and have better outcomes because of 5G and the latency of the network, continues Robert Le Busque. "5G could elevate virtual healthcare to new levels, enabling even more effective remote care."

Challenges in 5G rollout

While yes, there's a lot of promise with 5G entering our digital lives, ensuring 5G network rolls out as soon as possible is key to start reaping its benefits. However, challenges still remain.

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Intel's Jonathan Wood believes how fast 5G services are accessible to everyone still remains to be seen. "There's a responsibility when we're bringing new technology that it needs to be accessible to all," says Jonathan Wood. "It's when we are bringing all these transformative new technologies like AR and other benefits of 5G, that they reach every single person in even the remotest villages of India and around the world, and that's what I'm really passionate about seeing happen."

Qualcomm's Jim Cathey tells me industries that benefit the most out of 5G need to be penetrated the quickest. "While the spectrum allocation happens across the next year or so, the use-cases of 5G will have to be clearly defined," says Jim Cathey. "Industries that will get impacted positively will have to be identified and services that 5G can bring to impact lives of people should also be identified. For e.g medicine, agriculture can be amongst the first sectors to harness the true potential of 5G."

Infosys' Raja Shah thinks building network capacity for 5G will be a huge cost. "For a good 5G experience, fiber backhaul is a must for low latency and high throughput," he says. "In India less than 20% sites are on fiber and less than 40-50% have a fiber backbone globally. This will require a major network transformation costing billions in network investment."

Verizon's Robert Le Busque says that regulatory framework needs to be set in place for 5G to flourish. "One change in approach that could have a hugely positive impact here: the simplification of regulatory frameworks."

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"The key for India's policymakers," he tells me, "is to find ways to protect consumers where necessary, ensure competition and continue to promote innovation and investment, while minimizing regulation to instances where it is necessary, and avoiding regulation that skews markets."

Any misconceptions?

"One misconception is that 5G will replace 4G LTE," says Jim Cathey from Qualcomm. "In fact, the new 5G mobile network will be backed up by Gigabit LTE coverage foundation, which will provide ubiquitous Gigabit-class connectivity. For IoT applications, 5G is building on top of LTE IoT, which is part of the latest wave of LTE innovations to support low data rate, latency-tolerant IoT applications."

5G will go beyond just smartphones, believes Raja Shah from Infosys. He says, "5G will break the smartphone myth and will introduce sensors, consumer wearable devices, smart applications as few devices in addition to the traditional mobile phone."

Gaurav Agarwal, Managing Director, India & SAARC, Symantec told me, "For enterprise CSOs to support 5G-based innovations, the ecosystem won't just have to show a clear path to new revenues or new cost savings but also have to be trusted to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA) of enterprise data at rest, in use and in transit."

Leonard Sim, Head of Pre-Sales, APAC, Kaspersky, echoes that same sentiment. "The biggest myth surrounding 5G is that it will safe and secure from cyber threats. With new technology comes new forms of threat," he tells me.

"No one can be completely secure from cyberattacks even if they are using the fastest network on their device. One needs to be fully ready for all the potential threats and up their security game."

5G will bring its fair share of security nightmares

Kaspersky's Leonard Sim explains, "In my opinion, with the increase mobility that 5G will enable, not only would end users be accessing services directly, but it may also increase the ability for service providers to offer services directly over 5G." These additional "pop-up" services, while fast and convenient for the service provider, may also lead to additional security issues, thinks Leonard Sim.

Symantec's Gaurav Agarwal believes 5G will force a completely new data security model. "From the enterprise perspective, it's the confidentiality and integrity of data generated by their own 'things' deployed in the field that matters most.

"Evolving into the 5G era, the variety of these smart devices will accelerate, including "devices" such as autonomous cars," he goes on. "Whereas relatively dumb ĄŽthingsĄ¯ can be expected to rely heavily on storage and application logic stored in the cloud, many 5G use cases will require intelligent endpoints to store a lot more data, some of which may be highly sensitive."