The advent of 5G means latency restrictions over data networks will come to an end. For manufacturing this is not an incremental improvement over previous communication protocols. It’s revolutionary. I will let Dijam tell the rest of the story.
Gone are the days when we wished for a seamless collaboration environment interconnected by a powerful network. Why? What was thought to be impossible has become a reality with the advent of 5G (which stands for fifth generation) networks. When it comes to manufacturing, 5G is making a noticeable difference.
Its true potential is realized when integrated with Industry 4.0 technologies. What are these?
What 5G allows is high-speed generation of data that can be translated into real-world manufacturing applications. Based on data analysis, these technological capabilities not only improve productivity and efficiency but also enable more informed decisions. From manufacturing to supply chain strategies and logistics, IoT sensors can harness the potential of 5G to create a connected, intelligent ecosystem, transforming the way companies operate.
5G is the successor of 4G, the fourth generation of mobile network technology. A quick comparison between the two is warranted. 5G can be up to 100 times faster than 4G. That means for the average consumer downloading a feature-length movie, the wait time is reduced from 50 minutes to 50 seconds. Another key measurable difference is delay or latency, going from 50 to as much as 200 milliseconds in 4G to 1 millisecond with 5G. It takes the average human 250 milliseconds to react to a visual stimulus. 5G is 250 times more responsive which is an important advantage for an autonomous robot or vehicle.
In the 2010s, 4G set the standard as the fastest and most innovative cellular technology. 4G’s promises included enhanced cell density, improved Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities and greater bandwidth. LTE, a wireless broadband standard, was introduced with 4G. The combination of 4G and LTE continues today to support traffic over cellular networks and the Internet to this day.
The beginning deployment of 5G began in 2019. Deployment was slow because telecommunications providers had to dramatically expand infrastructure to support its emergence. They are still in the process of making those changes to their networks.
The low latency that 5G networks provide means reductions in the delay between sending and receiving data. For real-time communications and control in manufacturing, warehousing and distribution this is critical. Low latency ensures millisecond response times making 5G suitable for time-sensitive tasks in industrial automation, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other automated systems.
The higher data transfer rates, the feeds and speeds, allow for rapid and seamless two-way communication and the transfer of large amounts of data. This is essential for high-definition spatial data and video streaming, complex sensor data, and other data-intensive applications.
With 5G support for IoT devices has dramatically increased. A 4G network can support up to 2,000 devices per square kilometre. A 5G network can support 1 million. For telephone networks, utilities, and the energy grid, 5G represents a generational leap. For industry, it means the deployment of sensors, actuators, and devices making it possible for autonomous vehicles, smart factories, and smart infrastructure.
5G introduces the concept of network slicing, allowing a network operator to create dedicated slices or subsets of the network for specific uses. Dedicated network slices can control mobile communication, environment monitoring, smart homes, smart agriculture, smart meter reading, live streaming, video uploading, mobile healthcare services, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), smart grids, and industrial control services, all requiring millisecond-level latency and near-100% reliability.
5G’s eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) is key to making augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) work for manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and other supply chain applications.
For AR and VR applications which require continuous and seamless data flow, 5G is a must. It means VR users can experience ultra-high-definition content without lag or buffering. For AR applications, high-speed real-time data streaming means digital information and 3D digital twins can overlay what a user sees when working to manufacture, assemble, operate or maintain machinery.
5G transforms the mobile AR landscape by enabling richer and more complex experiences. On smartphones, AR with 5G networks delivers more detailed, interactive content for retail applications. AR with 5G in warehousing provides pickers and packers with visual cues and directions for locating items. AR with 5G also assists in the management of inventory by providing real-time reporting on stock levels. VR with 5G allows for simulations to train warehouse staff when facing new processes or building layouts.
In supply chain training applications, 5G significantly impacts AR/VR through advanced simulation and modelling. In engineering 5G with AR/VR can help with design and prototyping. And 5G with AR/VR helps customer support by enhancing communication and collaboration.
5G complements edge computing by bringing computing resources closer to the sources of data generation. Edge computing refers to a computing paradigm where the network and devices relevant to users are moved closer. The IoT device density that 5G can support makes this possible. The immediate benefits for applications requiring automated or quick decision-making mean data delays are minimized and efficiencies gained.
If densities of 1 million IoT devices per square kilometre aren’t enough, and if a millisecond response time doesn’t cut it, then wait for 6G. Compared to 5G, 6G networks will run 100 times faster with peak data rates of 1,000 Gigabits per second. 6G will accommodate up to 10 million IoT devices per square kilometre and AI running on 6G will be revolutionary. When will we see 6G deployed? The first pilots in North America are expected to be in place by 2028, with wider commercial use available by 2030.
]]>Now, wireless technology is linked to COVID-19’s emergence in articles appearing on the Internet. One marked double fact-checked that appears on the website News Punch, claims a peer-reviewed scientific study has been published linking the deployment of 5G networks with COVID-19. It states that the study conclusively proves the link between wireless technology and the spread of viruses and illness. The article it points to is a study appearing on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website. In reading the paper, however, nowhere in the content is there a definitive link, just supposition, descriptions of symptoms, and stating they are common to wireless network exposure and the coronavirus. The claim that this paper has been peer reviewed bares inspection.
You can list technologies we have accepted for use in our world that have potential downsides. Too many X-rays can cause radiation damage. Taking too many over-the-counter or prescription medicines can induce harmful medical conditions. Driving cars contributes to air pollution that can exacerbate conditions like asthma. But affirming a direct 5G connection to COVID-19 is neither conclusively proven nor even close to reality.
What sites like News Punch will not do is follow up and publish a retraction when it turns out they are wrong. For example, the article describing conclusive evidence also quotes another study as corroborative. But although it tells you that the second study was published on the NIH website, linking 5G deployment to the appearance of coronavirus in skin cells, it doesn’t note that the latter was recently retracted. No doubt, the study with “definitive proof” will soon go the retraction route based on its weak science and supposition rather than correlation or causation.
News Punch in the same article names Dr. Anthony Fauci as one of the villains suppressing “the truth” about 5G and COVID-19. Then it adds to the “facts” of its argument linking bee honey production to 5G deployment. And finally, it accuses Dr. Fauci of knowing for the past 15 years that hydroxychloroquine cures coronaviruses (which it does not ) of which COVID-19 is one. How prescient of the good doctor to have this knowledge and how evil of him not to share it.
COVID-19 isn’t brought on by 5G wireless deployment despite what serial producers of fake news and misinformation spew on the Internet. Just because studies appear on websites with good credentials doesn’t necessarily mean that the information they are providing is correct. That’s because peer-reviewed may not reflect what is actually taking place prior to an article being accepted for publication.
Today, peer-reviewed doesn’t have the same cachet as it has had in the past. This is happening because of the explosion in the number of scientific papers being published. Back in 2016, Nature published an article that stated scientific paper publishing was increasing at a rate of 8 to 9% per year and that this had been ongoing for several decades. In 2018, another Nature article noted that thousands of scientists were becoming hyper-prolific in publishing research at rates of one paper every five days. They were doing this because authorship was linked to scholarship which was linked to tenure in academia.
Another ongoing change to scientific publishing is the emergence of preprints. These are articles that get put on a server for general viewing by the scientific community. They have yet to be peer-reviewed. A study done in 2020, noted that more than 200,000 articles had appeared in the scientific literature on the subject of COVID-19. Many never made it beyond pre-print. And even those that went through a peer-review process, and got published ended up upon further review being retracted. This trend in COVID-19 articles continued through 2021 and 2022 and no doubt will in 2023. Many of these papers will appear briefly on legitimate peer-reviewed journal sites and then be retracted. Why this is happening relates to the volume increase and the lack of enough qualified reviewers capable of reading through this deluge of information. Many studies can get past a reviewer with no more than a look at the abstract. Considering the quality of writing in so many scientific papers these days, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Volume plus indecipherable prose is making peer review problematic.
But for those who are serial distributors of misinformation, the publishing explosion of weak science is an opportunity to cherry-pick content to conform to a fake news agenda and ideology. And because sites like News Punch continue to publish articles like these gathering an audience that is steeped in the world of conspiracy theories, its content is grist for their mill.
When the Internet began, and in the early days of social media sites, I naively thought that with barriers to universal communication and knowledge sharing disappearing, we would witness a levelling of the playing field where all nations and people would no longer be disadvantaged. But what I forgot was human nature’s dark side always rises to the occasion when presented with a new means to disseminate lies. It is our penchant to find the dark side combined with the Internet that makes a site like Breitbart be seen by some as legitimate when compared to legacy news organizations that publish verifiable facts and not fakery with a political agenda.
If you find this subject of interest, you may find an article published in the February 7th edition of USA Today written by Nate Trela worth reading.
]]>But wait. If you think the 5 billion number is considerable, by 2032 the number will grow to 8 billion equivalent to the current world population total today. More than 90% of us will be connected through the Internet. Not only will we have access, but we will be able to upload and download information at speeds that just twenty years ago would have been considered only available to a few Fortune 500 companies.
This revolution in connectivity is happening because of the arrival of ground-based 5G connectivity, one-hundred times faster than 4G, and ten times faster than the average broadband connection, and the emergence of space-based low-Earth constellations of satellites providing connectivity from anywhere on Earth. Leading the pack is SpaceX’s Starlink. Soon to follow are Kuiper from Amazon, E-Space, Iridium, Telesat, OneWeb, LeoSat, and China’s Hongyun.
The expansion of 5G connectivity and its successor, 6G (one hundred times faster than 5G) will mean that anyone with an inexpensive mobile phone will be able to connect at warp speed. And the same will be true for the trillions of Internet-ready devices that will help us sense and understand more of the world around us.
What will this mean for humanity?
Why is this happening? Because the airlines are claiming that 5G cellphone frequencies will jam in-flight operations as the spectra of frequencies being used by telecommunications companies will interfere with those being used by onboard aircraft systems. The telecommunication operators call the FAA and airline companies’ concerns “fearmongering” based on disinformation, noting that 5G today operates in nearly 40 countries around the world without causing disruptions to passengers, airports and airplanes.
Aircraft use a piece of equipment called a radio altimeter. It operates using C-band radio frequencies and has been around for more than 40 years. The radio spectrum used is between 4.2 and 4.4 Gigahertz in the U.S. The spectrum for 5G C-band wireless ranges from 3.7 to 3.98 Gigahertz.
What does a radio altimeter do on an aircraft? It provides above-ground positioning data to the airplane during flight. The data is shared with onboard systems that provide terrain awareness, assistance to the pilot during takeoff and landing as well as to the autopilot when engaged. It provides wind shear data and alerts when flying close to the ground. For helicopters where the majority of flights are never that far above the ground, radio altimetry is critical to safe operations.
So how could a different spectrum range threaten the aviation industry? The fear is that airplanes will fall from the sky because the altimeters will be jammed or provide incorrect altitude readings.
Stories about wireless telephony doing weird things go back to the beginning of its introduction. Wireless signals from mobile phones were said to interfere with the operation of electric wheelchairs, hearing aids, and pacemakers. There were some reported incidents of radio interference from the phone network that caused a wheelchair to malfunction, hearing aids to buzz, and heart pacemakers to react to a cellphone when placed in a shirt pocket next to a person’s chest. But all of these issues were addressed quickly by manufacturers.
The current hysteria about 5G goes far beyond the airline industry. It includes conspiracy theories that 5G causes cancer, or is responsible for global warming. Unfounded and unfortunate, these ideas persist in an age where nonsense gets around the globe at Internet speed and over time is legitimized through retelling.
But the 5G hoo-hah from the aviation industry isn’t quite a conspiracy. It is more akin to the Y2K insanity that befell the planet as we approached the year 2000. A whole bunch of computer software companies warned us about a data field problem found largely in legacy mainframe computer software that operated for decades in large financial institutions, government, utilities, and manufacturing. The programs used two-digit data fields to indicate the year. So 1999 was entered as “99.” That meant all data records that followed when the year 2000 came around would register as “00.” Would that mean 1900 and if so would that compromise all the data records and databases recorded after 1900 on these systems? Would it cause software that used the date field for operational purposes to stop working?
Y2K software companies made a killing selling their remediation services to update legacy databases from a two to four-digit year. Not all did and when 2000 came, there were very few interruptions to services and operations around the world. Like the malfunctioning wheelchair there were a few incidents where a bank vault would not open, or an elevator not operate. But no elevator plunged to the ground. The banks’ vaults opened. And no airplanes fell from the skies.
Getting back to the story about radio altimeters. Their operation is determined by international convention. The 5G wireless spectrum bands are auctioned by nations or blocs like the European Union. Notification of spectrum band sales is posted for all to see well ahead of auctions. But like so many industries, the airlines are laggards when it comes to keeping up with technological changes that affect them. And in the U.S. it appears that the FAA has been paying little attention to telecommunications advances. So airlines haven’t considered upgrades to equipment that is mission-critical to airplane operations such as radio altimeters in the face of advances in wireless telephony.
Years after 5G auctions have sold spectrum ranges of concern, the airline industry has awakened to what may or may not be a potential problem. This is well after telecommunications companies have announced rollouts of their 5G wireless services, and after mobile phone manufacturers have introduced numerous 5G-compatible products.
The FAA has gotten involved since last summer, publishing presentations and studies that describe the problem that in some cases radio-based telemetry and equipment on airplanes might be compromised by C-band wireless signals operating at 3.98 Gigahertz. The FAA, as result, has requested of the federal U.S. government that deployment of 5G near U.S. airports be prohibited.
In Canada, where similar concerns have been raised the federal government proactively has placed restrictions on 5G-based telecommunications near airports even though the spectrum for wireless in the country is 3.5 Gigahertz, a far cry from the 4.2 to 4.4 Gigahertz frequencies used by airplane radio altimeters. Other countries have a much narrower safety net in place, as low as between 1.0 to 2.0 Gigahertz which these nations consider to be more than adequate to stop radio interference.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had in picking the spectra to auction for 5G put in place a safety net to protect radio altimeter bandwidths. The 2.2 Gigahertz difference was seen as more than adequate.
So is this a real threat? Will airplanes fall out of the skies? If they do it will not be because of 5G wireless deployment but more than likely because of manufacturers like Boeing cutting corners with design flaws and bad software such as occurred in the Boeing 737 Max 8. And it will happen because the regulator, the FAA, doesn’t pay attention or do its job.
A final note: There is no standard for radio altimeters in how they operate including the equipment’s ability to work within a specified radio spectrum. It is pretty clear, where oversight by U.S. federal regulators is needed, it is decidedly wanting.
]]>Alien Zoo is a virtual laboratory where a student learns about becoming a scientist. Explore, observe, collect digital specimens, and solve problems to learn how to think and other key disciplines needed to become a biologist. This is active learning at its best.
Don your headset to enter the immersive alien world. Your headset comes with an attached computer that fits into a worn backpack. Sensors track your physical movements with the built-in AI algorithms predicting where you are likely to go as you explore the environment. Interact with other participants equally outfitted within this new world. If that isn’t intriguing enough to pique your curiosity, future versions of the Dreamscape platform will make connectivity and mobility even faster and better with the adoption of 5G. The end goal will be to create 5G network hubs (Verizon is the partner) which will mean no more backpack. Communications among participants will be headset to headset.
The developers of Dreamscape hope to make it available for home learning environments fueled by the widespread adoption of 5G networks to create a whole new range of learning opportunities. The key will be widespread dissemination of 5G which will address the 260 million children today who have no access to education. And considering the UNESCO-forecasted teacher shortage by 2030, when 60 million will be needed, Dreamscape can represent a big step towards the democratizing of education across the planet in the 21st century.
Have headset and 5G and virtual educational experiences become accessible for all. That’s the power of Dreamscape and other digital virtual learning environments that make personalized education experiences such as discussing philosophy at the feet of Plato, or conversing with Albert Einstein as he formulates his thought experiments and takes you along for the ride. And in both experiences because of AI, the immersive environment will understand what you need to learn to develop your critical thinking skills and knowledge.
The convergence of AI, VR and wireless 5G takes away the problem of finding teachers and funding schools for the hundreds of millions seeking to learn who currently have limited to no opportunity. And it is finally time to end our 19th-century industrial education model once and for all, replacing it with a fantastic digital education environment that awaits all of us.
Back in 2014 when I first wrote about the changing educational paradigm I was invited to speak at a conference in Jamaica that was focused on the island’s 2030 future. During my talk, I stressed the importance of digital literacy and the implementation of game-based learning in the island’s curriculum. I described a future of self-directed, continuous learning for life facilitated by an online virtual learning experience. Well, it appears that the future reality I described is coming to pass a lot sooner.
So who is behind Dreamscape other than a VR company and Arizona State? It’s an impressive list of investors and partners that includes WarnerMedia, Viacom, Disney, AMC, IMAX, Steven Spielberg (the film director), and Hans Zimmer (the musician and film composer). Arizona State’s President, Michael M. Crow, has described this partnership as one that will push the boundaries and set a new standard for how people learn in the 21st century. I agree.
]]>The fifth generation of wireless connectivity is making its way across the world. For businesses, this game-changing technology will have broad impacts on what businesses are able to achieve—especially through Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
5G means wider bandwidth and more connectivity, not just people-to-people, but people-to-devices, and devices-to-devices. It means the ability for business to mine even more data and respond to clients in near real-time.
5G represents an upgrade from 4G by a factor of 10. That means everything is faster, that more devices than ever before can be connected, that the promise of autonomous vehicles can become a reality,
Exploring some of the details should help you to understand how the integration of this technology is impactful beyond anything in telecommunications we have seen to date.
5G stands for the fifth generation in mobile network connectivity. It isn’t limited to the newest smartphone models. In fact, its most significant innovation is the ability to connect many more people, machines, and devices than were ever possible before in a single network.
5G networks are already up and running in many countries and communities. You might even have a smartphone that supports the new telecommunication standard. It is intended to not just give us higher feeds and speeds, but greater reliability because the density of the network nodes (telecommunication towers) far surpasses that of 4G and the latter’s predecessors.
Facing the digital needs of a world reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, the arrival of 5G networks means innovative solutions as well as challenges for businesses as they shift to this new standard which better addresses the high-speed requirements of today and the future.
The benefits are a big step forward for business with 60% of executives already reporting new avenues of opportunity opened by 5G and the IoT. IoT will simply be better on 5G networks.
How so better? Connected IoT devices make it possible for vast networks to send and receive data. The result will be better insights into business processes, the condition of equipment, the status of inventory, and virtually anything else you can imagine with billions of sensors inter-communicating. Broader bandwidth will mean more awareness, more information, and more cost savings.
5G technology will impact business IoT devices by:
These and more offerings from a highly connected network give business leaders the ability to monitor equipment and processes at an unprecedented scale. As a result, businesses can receive a productivity boost, allow new industries to emerge, and support smaller organizations during times of fluctuating supply and demand.
Large businesses will enjoy the scale and scope of data insights offered by 5G combined with IoT. This means the potential to revitalize and streamline industrial processes, logistics and supply channels.
5G with IoT represents a game-changer. From smart factories to smart cities, managing the future requires the harmonization of IoT devices with the power and bandwidth of 5G. For businesses already using IoT it will be impossible to notice the difference.
But transitioning to 5G may require businesses to update computing and telecommunications devices and other parts of their network infrastructure which means there are new overheads to consider. Recouping the investment should happen pretty quickly as businesses see the value in the data mining, low latency, and connectivity that 5G will provide.
One final note of caution. Don’t neglect cybersecurity when integrating 5G and IoT devices into your IT and telecommunications infrastructure. As much as the technology will open new business opportunities, it will invite a new generation of cybercriminals seeking the weaknesses in your operating environment.
]]>To me this more marketing hype than reality.
5G, the new telecommunications paradigm promises worldwide high-speed wireless connectivity.
Yet there is in 5G not a lot of there, there. So far worldwide deployments amount to:
By the end of this year, 5G commercial deployments will have reached 55 in number, a small fraction of the tens of thousands of telecommunication networks in existence today.
Before 5G there was:
And now comes 5G – offering download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second and the ability to not only handle the human component of telecommunications but also the vast and growing number of non-human devices including smart sensors and switches, called the Internet of Things (IoT).
In a recent forecast, Gartner stated that 7% of communication service providers today are deploying 5G infrastructure in anticipation of the worldwide deployment of this faster paradigm. The Gartner forecast included revenue figures anticipating growth in 5G of 89% by the end of 2020 from the current $2.2 billion in 2019.
And even though we are at the beginning of 5G deployment, it is interesting to note that there are still 2G and 3G telecommunications service operators in the world. The last of them in Taiwan and Thailand, by the end of this year, may shut down permanently.
4G, LTE, and variants are currently pre-eminent, deployed by service providers globally, and likely to continue to be the dominant telecommunications platform throughout the coming decade. When you consider it took 10 years to deploy 4G in the United States, I suspect that telecommunications providers are still trying to achieve a return on their investment.
5G will make 4G deployment look easy and cheap comparatively. 5G is considerably more complex, requiring new technologies, and a far denser cellular network. Most providers will find the cost pretty steep. So even when they announce 5G deployments, what will probably be put in place is a 4G+ network that will approach the download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second but not quite get there. And as for upload speeds, don’t expect anything close to your download experience.
5G is a work in progress. The standard has yet to be finished and won’t be finalized until sometime in 2020 or even 2021. With 5G deployment it requires new chipsets, new antennas, and significantly greater cell density. For example, the EE recent 5G deployment depicted in the picture, above is promising to add 100 cell sites per month to increase speeds incrementally beyond those of 4G. Without vastly increased cell density, 5G will fail to meet expectations.
And not to put a downer on the technology, at best, 5G when fully deployed will give smartphone users the feel of a good WiFi connection, capable of streaming high-definition programming. The true promise of the technology will come about with the billions of smart sensors interacting with billions of new cellular antenna. So if you are an early adopter of a 5G smartphone like the latest Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and the Huawei P30 Pro, you may find yourself disappointed when they deliver no more than the experience of a 4G+ network.
Don’t expect 5G to become a global phenomenon in the next 5 years. 4G is showing it is more than robust enough to handle current levels of mobile telecommunications traffic. But it is far more likely if you live in South Korea, China, Japan, and the United States, (sorry the United Kingdom), we should see significant growth in 5G networks with China by 2025 representing 40% of global connectivity.
Oh, and did I mention 6G? In an article appearing on this blog site in January of this year China was already working on 6G deployment with download speeds of 1 terabyte per second and the end of any latency issues for wireless networking. The implications for IoT means instead of billions of smart sensors and devices, that number will grow to trillions, enabling autonomous vehicles, smart homes, roads, lighting, and even the emergence of an augmented reality akin to the Star Trek holodeck.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t suspect widespread 5G globally until the late 2020s and early 2030s and by then maybe it will be supplanted by 6G because in the world of telecommunications this is the ongoing state of technological disruption and innovation in our 21st century.
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What we are talking about is radio frequency wavelengths which today are used for a wide range of communication purposes. The radio frequency or RF spectrum runs from 30 Hertz (a Hertz is a standard unit of frequency defined by 1 electromagnetic wave cycle per second) to 300 GigaHertz. At the low end of the spectrum, these RF frequencies are used for navigation, AM band radio, and wireless communication with pacemaker implants, just to name a few examples. High-frequency bands are used for shortwave radio, CB radio, radar, FM radio, television, aircraft communication, weather radio, and mobile land and marine communication. The highest frequencies are used by radio astronomy, your microwave ovens, WiFi networks, GPS, and satellite radio.
With all these applications could we conceivably run out of free RF spectrum bands to add something like the deployment of a global 5G network without it interfering with other critical uses of radio wave-based communication?
This is top of mind for those at NOAA who track hurricanes by satellite. The rollout of the licenses for 5G operating in the 24.25 to 25.25 GigaHertz bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, is seen by meteorologists to be far too close to the radio frequencies in use by NASA satellites. According to Dr. Neil Jacobs of NOAA, in testimony given to the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the auctioning of RF bands to telecommunication providers in the aforementioned range would mean a potential loss of 77% of the data transmitted by satellites to ground stations causing a degradation in forecasting of 30%. In other words, without clear transmission of storm track data from satellites, forecasters would be seriously hampered from being able to predict where hurricanes were headed. That would likely hamper NOAA’s current level of service pushing them back in terms of accuracy of forecasts to the early 1980s, or in the case of hurricanes a reduction in lead time of between 2 and 3 days. In the case of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a recent study shows that with degradation in data as predicted by NOAA from the interference in satellite transmissions, weather modeling would have completely missed the New Jersey landfall.
So how can 5G and weather RF spectrum wavelengths co-exist? 5G isn’t restricted to the 24 to 25 GigaHertz RF bands. The network technology behind it is flexible enough to operate within existing 4G RF band frequencies (600 MegaHertz and 6 GigaHertz), as well as at the millimeter-wave RF band wavelengths of between 24 and 86 GigaHertz. So it would make sense that future auctions of RF bands to telecommunication providers stay clear of the lower end of the millimeter-wave radio spectrum. Of course, that makes perfect sense to a layman like me. Who knows, however, what lobbyists will influence decision makers in governments when issuing licenses? After all, there is lots of money to be made from the sale of RF band transmission wavelengths?
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But none of these legal maneuvers by the United States can stop China’s efforts to become the leading technology provider in the telecommunications space giving American and European firms a run for their money.
The latest news reported by Frank Chen, in the Asia Times, describes research being done at the Southeast University, Nanjing, to develop 6G wireless systems technologies even while 5G has yet to be rolled out globally. Chen reports that since 2015 China has been outspending the United States by $24 billion USD in building its wireless communication infrastructure. Telecommunications companies in China have erected 350,000 new cellular communication towers versus the U.S. with 30,000 in support of the country’s 5G rollout.
When will the first signs of 6G emerge from China? As early as 2020 when the first trials will begin to work out the kinks in the technology. China may even stop 5G rollout if it can accelerate 6G development even sooner.
In North America, telecommunications companies talk about 6G being at least a decade away. These types of pronouncements are a bit disconcerting to say the least. But work in Finland at the University of Oulu is focused on what it calls the 6Genesis project where its researchers talk about 6G emerging by the mid-2020s. The Finns are spending about 250 million Euros on 6G research. Meanwhile, Qualcomm, Dell, Intel, and Ericsson have committed more than $326 billion USD to 5G research and development and something they call 5G+, a precursor to what could become 6G.
Compared to 5G which eclipses 4G network speeds of 1 Gigabit per second by a factor of 10, 6G will deliver speeds of 1 Terabyte per second. So what will that mean for we cellular users? Well other than the speed thing, it means that rather than billions of devices being interconnected in the Internet of Things (IoT), we are talking about devices in the trillions. It means artificial intelligence applications will become even better in support of initiatives such as the development of autonomous vehicles, smart cities, smart roads, smart energy, and virtual and augmented reality may bring us closer to the Star Trek holodeck. It will also mean feeds and speeds can vary with a move away from the one-speed-fits-all pipe we have today. That will mean a more nuanced Internet that fits the specific feeds and speeds needs of every application.
With 6G the world will become one giant telecommunications network from the depths of the ocean to near-Earth orbit. The fact that the Chinese research community is hellbent to make this a reality shows just how far the country has come since the passing of Mao Zedong.
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Today we live in a 4G and 3G telecommunications world. By 2020 we will see the emergence of the first global 5G rollouts and my guess is we will never look back. So here is what’s good, bad, and ugly about this coming communications revolution.
5G Good!
5G Bad!
5G The Ugly!
So you may be asking why we are going ahead with 5G knowing that there are so many unknowns and cautions in its deployment. The answer is 5G will be needed as 4 billion more of us become connected through a global telecommunications network. And with all those humans will come hundreds of billions of smart devices and sensors to share network bandwidth. Without 5G none of this is likely to happen.
So in putting together this abbreviated list of the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to 5G, I hope to have given you the means to walk into the future with your eyes wide open. That means you can talk to legislators, telecommunication providers, and equipment builders to ensure that they understand how to mitigate the risks of the bad and enact necessary rules, regulations, and policies to ensure the ugly never happens.
