5.5G to the rescue

Published regularly throughout the year, Transform looks at the ways in which digital technology is re-shaping the present, while giving readers a glimpse of the future.

In this edition: ?

Halfway home, and it’s time for ROI

5G, the fifth generation of mobile telephony, began rolling out worldwide in 2019. That puts us roughly halfway down the road to 6G, which probably will see commercial deployment around 2030.

Marking that halfway point is 5.5G, also known as 5G-Advanced. It’s a group of new technologies that give operators the higher bandwidth, lower latency, and greater reliability needed to deliver network slicing, deterministic service, and other cutting-edge capabilities.?

But the acid test facing telecom operators concerns ROI: Return on Investment.

“5G has been successful, insofar as?take-up has risen,” says Tim Hatt, Head of Research at GSMA Intelligence.

But people see it mainly as a speed upgrade for consumers. “What hasn't happened is the enterprise dimension,” Hatt says, “things like private networks, and massive IoT.” To justify their substantial investments in 5G, operators need to monetize those services quickly.

“If you're on a 10-year infrastructure cycle…then you've got to start to see an ROI midway through that cycle,” Hatt says.?While noting that operators in Korea, China, and to some extent the United States are reporting reasonably good results around some of their enterprise clients for things like ports, airports,?and manufacturing, it’s unclear whether such results are enough to move the needle.?

Read the full Transform interview with Tim Hatt .

Bringing services closer to Namibia’s far-flung citizens

In March, together with Huawei, the Republic of Namibia conducted its first 5G trial. As 5G and 5G-Advanced work their way into the country’s networks, ICT Minister Emma Theofelus is looking for a number of positive changes.

“We ran tests to see if 5G could elevate Namibia’s competitiveness in e-sports competitions,” she says. “We're also looking at education, health, and mining. We have oil and gas as a new industry because we recently discovered oil. Likewise, we have a green hydrogen industry as well, which we hope to develop by 2030.”

Minister Theofelus puts special emphasis on using 5G connectivity to accelerate the rollout of government services to citizens.

“Namibia is a large country of more than 825,000 square kilometers,” she notes. “But with only 3 million people, we’re the second least densely populated country in the world. People are dispersed all over the place, which means they often have to travel great distances to get a service. That takes time and costs money that many people don’t have.”

Read the full Transform interview with Emma Theofelus.

Mobile AI is on the horizon

5.5G will deliver faster, more reliable services to businesses and consumers. It will also pave the way for a world marked by mobile intelligence, according to David Wang, Executive Director of the Board at Huawei.?

Wang notes that, over the past five years, commercial 5G has achieved remarkable success, with more than 60 carriers announcing commercial 5.5G deployment.

The new era of mobile AI,?he says, will usher in three big changes.

“First, human-computer interaction will shift from being touch-based to multimodal. This means the ways we interact with computers will extend to natural language, gestures, and emotions, delivering an on-demand, 24/7 experience.

“Second, content generation will be revolutionized. Previously, people acquired information mainly through search engines. In the future, such information will be generated by AI. Information production will be no longer about prefabrication but about customization, making comprehensive and tailored real-time services available.

“Third, mobile devices will go from being smartphones to being AI terminal assistants and embodied AI. This means mobile devices will become portals to seamless AI.”

Read the complete article by David Wang in Transform .

5.5G will bring a new era for Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have been the subject of media hype for years, and have experienced several false dawns.

But a new day is on the horizon, according to Robert Ramsey, CEO of Rain Technology, a company that holds roughly 700 patents related to displays and light control from displays.

In an interview with Transform, Dr. Ramsey says that better optics are set to improve the quality of AR and VR systems in applications from healthcare to manufacturing.?

“AR systems need to push a lot of real-time information into the headset or other display,” Ramsey says. “Unless you’re wearing a big computer on your back, that information is coming from the cloud, and streaming into your glasses. So, you’ve got these computationally intensive things happening in the cloud, and the content needs to reach the display wirelessly, in real time. To accomplish that, you need the high speed and minimal delay of 5.5G.”

Read the complete interview with Dr. Robert Ramsey in Transform.

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