5G and Beyond to Infinity

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Evan Kirstel

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A top Digital Social Influencer helping B2B clients grow their social media audience, visibility, and engagement

By Evan Kirstel @evankirstel

For nearly two decades I have been saying there is “infinite demand for bandwidth.” Now we are poised for global 5G expansion which Qualcomm and others are leading and innovating to bring global users and audiences faster speeds than we ever imagined. As you can see from Figure 1, users want different features from 5G but what do they really want. I would like to give you a few insights and observations about what users will do with more bandwidth and faster connectivity. To begin with, 5G brings us faster, cheaper and more seamless connections. If you ever remembered the old days of dialup when modems would squeal at each other and the connection would easily disconnect, 5G (or even 4G LTE today) goes way beyond our “ease of use” needs to bring the means for getting and staying connected even better and for many “always connected.”

Regarding what users want. Users tell me they “we want it all.” This really means that if you look at the trends even for 2018 or five or ten-years ahead users want to access to create “live” video anywhere at any time to share, collaborate and create their own news. Another area of great interest is short “lifespan” disappearing video sometimes called ephemeral video which is fleeting or passing to describe the nature of media on social networks accessible for up to 24 hours. That is, the speed of any kind of news, events and full-length content will be dependent on the ability of the network to deliver that content faster with greater quality of service and reliability.

In regard to business applications of 5G, in the book The Split Second Society there are great insights on how more bandwidth (or faster connectivity?) is changing our perceptions of how we do everything we do in our work lives. A key point in the book relevant to 5G is “organizational velocity” which is speed and the various ways communication moves inside the organization. Faster communications bandwidth will have a major impact on the speed of communications both inside and outside the organization. As email evolves into video mail and live real-time multi-media hologram design processes with augmented and virtual reality, connectivity speed can have a direct relation to the speed of the business delivery. With shortening product and delivery cycles, organizations will integrate 5G to increase their organizational velocity. To fuel even higher bandwidth needs, tech tools like IoT-internet of things will provide so much “big data” that even 5G will not be enough to process every nanosecond of data coming from smart highways, hospitals and everything else we are connected and interconnected with.

In summary, consumer spends less time watching traditional tech but certainly more and more time creating and managing their own content studios, 5G will accelerate this trend. For businesses, this means that mobile 5G content will also connect customers back to product and marketing designers as well as others to enhance the customer experience. 5G will enhance the velocity of communications for a better digital experience for all those watching. There is much more to come as these are just a few of the way people want and need an “infinite bandwidth.”

References:

Qualcomm Launches Technology Innovation with Advancements in the Always Connected PC and its Next-Generation Qualcomm Snapdragon Mobile Platform

https://www.qualcomm.com/media/documents/5g-consumer-survey