The Future of Wireless 5G: Powering a Connected World
When I was a kid my thoughts about the future, were fueled by books (Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov were great influences) and later by Hollywood movies and TV series. I dreamt of traveling in time through the lens of Robert Zemeckis in Back to the Future and owning a talking self-driving automobile across seasons of Knight Rider (that is - of course – until David Hasselhoff got busy keeping the beaches of Malibu safe, and getting our whole generation California dreaming).
I’m excited today to see some of those dreams come true!
Admittedly, while Nike did manage to replicate Marty McFly’s self-lacing shoes with the limited-edition Air Mag, we still can’t zip across time like he did with Doc Brown. Yet thanks to Tesla’s leadership in electric cars, autonomous vehicles are gradually becoming reality in parts of the world, which - coupled with advances in conversational user interfaces – closely resembles Kit, the Hoff’s smart car. This autonomous-driving future is made possible nowadays by cutting edge advancements in technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), electric batteries, and most importantly wireless communications.
Need for Speed… and More!
In a year marred with lockdowns and physical distancing, for many of us, the bare necessities really boiled down to fast and reliable internet, which brings us today to discuss the 5th Generation of cellular technology (5G), with its promise to fulfill all our connectivity needs faster than any wireless technology did before, delivering fiber like speeds through the air interface.
As telcos around the world rush to declare the first and fastest 5G service, leading to the UAE’s Etisalat being recently recognized as the world’s fastest 5G network, one would be tempted to think that lightning speed internet is the only thing that 5G brings to the table. 5G actually constitutes a quantum leap from the previous generation, with its superior reliability, and infinitesimal latency approaching 1 millisecond, 5G enables mission critical applications, driving not only automobiles (pun intended), but also the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0).
Combined with AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) which are already implemented across multiple industries and the supply chain, 5G connectivity helps businesses track assets, centralize control, and reap more benefits from the power of analytics.
The Internet of Everything
While we have talked a lot about IoT in the past few years, 5G will actually make the internet a ubiquitous element in our world, connecting everything and everyone and hence my personal preference for calling it IoE, the Internet of Everything. 5G achieves this by lowering the cost of embedded cellular technologies in various sensors, devices, and machines, driving economies of scale and making possible massive deployments across various sectors and markets.
Through its ability to enable and support a significantly higher number of things; robots, drones, wearables, and virtual reality (VR) headsets, a myriad device that can now be connected simultaneously. In layman terms, this means our lives will be far more digitally connected, with smartphones, appliances and wearables communicating seamlessly among each other and perhaps one day even with tiny devices embedded in our bodies.
Our team at Meditari recently issued a whitepaper in collaboration with our friends at Joun Technologies, discussing the various use cases of 5G, opportunities they open up and implications for the mobile ecosystem.
One More Thing…
When 4G was developed at the turn of this century, we predicted multiple ways consumers and businesses will use it. All that, was before Apple launched iPhone, a “revolutionary device” (in the words of Steve Jobs himself), which ushered the smartphone era, catalyzed a global innovation ecosystem, and resulted into a plethora of mobile first applications such as Snapchat, Tinder and Uber - which we had never even thought off. Similarly, we spent years predicting a contactless future for payments and yet that was simply realized by a technology as rudimentary as the QR Code (love it or hate it) and catapulted into mainstream adoption by the COVID-19 related restrictions.
As we recover from this disruptive pandemic, it is exciting to imagine the possibilities that 5G will bring us. So, go ahead, unleash your creativity and daydream about that next ground-breaking invention that will redefine the world and, once again, confirm that wireless is indeed THE greatest technology platform ever created by mankind.
Wirelessly yours,
Ziad
Click to download the Joun Technologies x Meditari Whitepaper, The Future of Connected Experiences 5G Opportunities & Challenges.
This article and the accompanying whitepaper were collaboratively written on laptops across 3 time-zones and multiple flights (yes!), comments and edits were exchanged on various messaging and cloud storage platforms, while background music was piped through wireless headphones connected to a smartphone running a streaming music app. All devices were wirelessly connected to the various home and co-working space WiFi networks.
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