How Australian enterprises can leverage 5G leadership

No single player will provide enterprise 5G solutions on their own, as solo efforts - and enterprises should be rightly wary of any such proposal.

Value will come to the enterprises in partnership with industry experts - communications service providers (CSPs), industry solutions developers, as well as specialist hardware device manufacturers (e.g. of autonomous vehicles or robots) - all working together to provide the best-possible solutions for the enterprise.

Optus is already strengthening the relationships needed to create the enterprise 5G ecosystems we believe will become the foundations and building blocks of successful enterprise 5G solutions.

The reason for this is that the opportunities - and the solutions - are varied, diverse and complex, reflecting the large number of vertical markets for which 5G is relevant.

We're currently in what many describe as the fourth industrial revolution - or Industry 4.0 - and 5G will make industry 4.0 take off.

The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources defines Industry 4.0 as the connection between the physical world and the digital world, with particular focus on advanced automation and robotics, communication between machines and humans, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and sensor technology (enabled by the Internet of Things).

A wide range of devices and supporting technology, such as touch interfaces, speech recognition, 3D printing, AR and VR, will play their part, but across all vertical markets, and therefore across all enterprises, one thing remains constant: increasing very large volumes of data.

Here's an example of what this means. Ahead of 5G, one option for enterprises keen to start early is implementation of 4G LTE - 4G Long-Term Evolution, an evolutionary step between 3G and 5G, anchored on today's 4G technology.

How does this translate to different vertical markets?

In warehousing, enterprises that move quickly to 5G will typically enjoy average data transmission speeds up to 10 times faster than 4G LTE, allowing them potentially to move many thousands of more pallets each year as a result of having data that’s more accurate, and available much faster.

Logistics companies will be able to increase the short-range tracking of goods using barcodes and scanners.

Retailers will be able to reduce theft, improve inventory management and tracking, and improve stock turn optimisation, as well as create new customer experiences, especially in-store.

And in factories, enterprises will be able to introduce ever-more precise manufacturing processes, reconfigure manufacturing lines, and improve safety.

The benefits to the enterprises will be commercial: agility, increased revenue, decreased costs, and market differentiation.

Australian enterprises can leverage 5G leadership by working with CSPs such as Optus to tap into 5G leadership from elsewhere in the world. For example, Singtel and Ericsson invited ABB, CapGemini and Swedish autonomous solutions company Hexagon to the Center of Excellence webinar series, to explore the possibilities enabled by this exciting and developing 5G ecosystem.

More information and content on 5G and how your organisation can benefit can be found here: https://www.optus.com.au/enterprise/5g. To download our report ‘A blueprint for success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ visit https://www.optus.com.au/enterprise/industry-4-0.

This article is also published on the Optus Enterprise blog.