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5G is a promising technology that has become widely available today. Some even consider it to be a silver bullet that will solve most business challenges. Although this is far from the truth, 5G opens up new applications, such as providing low-latency connectivity to autonomous vehicles and powering smart cities.

Globally, the 5G technology market is estimated at $700 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow at 70.83% CAGR during the 2020-2025 period. North America is expected to remain the leading region having the largest impact over the 5G market and controlling about two-thirds of the market share.

The technology is poised to boosts the development of telecommunications, but it doesn't stop there. 5G will revamp the automotive, healthcare, retail, gaming, manufacturing fields, and the sector of smart infrastructure. Business owners can expect a pool of opportunities uncovered by the technology for expediting and automating various processes. Here is what 5G technology is and how businesses could harness its potential.

What is 5G?

It is the new standard set by the International Telecommunication Union, and it is the next step after 4G. Gadget manufacturers increasingly focus on delivering more and more 5G smartphones, but carrier networks are still often unable to ensure the latency required for the standard. It might take a decade for the technology rollout.

The highest possible speed of 5G is not determined so far, but it's expected to take seconds to download a full-length HD movie via 5G — so, around 1 gigabit per second (GBps).

The fifth generation of mobile wireless communications can transmit more data than ever faster, reducing latency and connecting more devices simultaneously. Due to the speed rate, the number of 5G smartphone subscriptions will exceed 1 billion by 2022, when the technology will become the standard and, as many experts believe, will be 10 or 20 times faster than the existing 4G LTE networks.

What is so special about 5G?

There is a range of advantages that a 5G network brings to businesses in various niches. Let's look at the most important benefits of the technology, including improved speed, latency, capacity, and coverage.

Higher Speed 

Several factors like network congestion or the spectrum frequency used by operators may affect data speed. But once 5G gets installed in the network, it might make the existing connection about 10 times faster. So the 5G-enabled speed may facilitate the rollout of the Internet of Things (IoT), a network of connected devices and sensors. 5G will be most helpful in manufacturing, smart homes, automobiles, and many other fields.

Lower Latency

The 5G standard can reduce download latency to 4 milliseconds for mobile devices and 1 millisecond for automated cars. Low latency technologies will help improve the performance of various devices, including remote healthcare monitoring gadgets, IoT in-home systems, entertainment content provision, and other cases of industry automation.

Great Capacity

Unlike LTE, the 5G architecture enables a greater amount of bandwidth, thus helping solve traffic congestion issues. The technology provides 20 to 30 times more capacity than 4G. The wireless industry has a vested interest in promoting the new standard since the increased capacity makes 5G cheaper than 4G or other technology in the world of big data.

Ubiquitous Nature

5G requires small land areas per cell and dense placement of a great number of antenna elements, in contrast to preceding technologies. The new standard focuses on delivering a consistent coverage and improved user experience, equally for residents of smart cities of users in rural areas.

For all the perks listed above, there are some challenges 5G currently faces. For example, the number of 5G-compatible mobile devices on the market is still limited; and the omnipresence of the new standard directly depends on the sufficient number of 5G devices available. Besides, significant hurdles remain in building new infrastructure, which is quite costly and requires government regulators to participate in setting up such a network that would combine digital safety with the highest efficiency.  

How your business might prosper with 5G

As has already been revealed, 5G has a great potential to renovate a range of industries. Read on to find out what opportunities the technology opens up for business in the field of IoT, retail, healthcare, gaming, and self-driving vehicles.

IoT devices for smart city and industrial automation

Many cities worldwide are deploying intelligent transportation systems and aim to support the connected vehicle technology that would allow vehicles to exchange data with other elements of a smart city ecosystem. 5G technology would ensure the needed connection speed and quality and would help improve road safety.

IoT is gaining momentum in industrial automation, and here 5G would be of value too. Robots used to complete a huge number of repetitive tasks need to communicate with the surroundings and swiftly exchange sensor data with other systems. 5G might expedite wireless data transmission and help machines perform more tasks within a set period.

Retail

Customer experience is a cornerstone of a prospering business in retail. Industry players may use 5G both for virtual service provision and in physical shopping centers. Consumers would seamlessly use virtual carts instead of physical ones, or they would enjoy the experience of visiting cashier-less stores.

Healthcare

Providers of healthcare services could improve the patient experience with 5G. The technology would allow doctors and patients to stay in touch both in rural areas and cities. Wearable devices would be more efficient to alert medical professionals about alarming symptoms instantly, as the technology would practically exclude the chance of connection loss.

Gaming and virtual reality

5G may provide gamers with an immersive experience. A new standard of speed would help boost high-definition live streaming; the ultra-low latency would fuel devices with high computing power; storage, processing, and retrieval of data would be executed in the cloud. Besides, virtual reality games and applications, which depend on fast feedback and response times, would benefit immensely from the technology.

Autonomous Vehicles

A key feature of 5G is the reduced latency it enables, allowing autonomous vehicles using current cellular networks to respond from 10 to 100 times faster than before. Due to the new standard, vehicles would better respond to changes around them automatically; and the next step would be creating a vehicle-to-everything communication network. 

Conclusion

The much anticipated 5G revolution is on the way now, and business should not be left behind. The fifth generation of cellular mobile communications standard promises to improve data speeds by 10 times, compared to 4G networks, allowing a 50% increase in mobile data transfer and a 60% speed increase. Those enhanced capabilities might be extremely beneficial for cloud computing, virtual reality, and IoT devices for automation and self-navigating vehicles.

5G still requires new infrastructure to be put in place for the migration of existing networks. Businesses should realize that developing an optimal 5G use case involves planning a proper architecture and associated factors, such as spectrum availability, the speed of data transmission on the physical layer, and network security.