COVID affects the research & innovation on 5G in the whole world
From late 2019, we are hearing about the fifth-generation wireless network that is the best and biggest 5G network. Within a few months, almost 45 communication service providers across the world launched significant investments in the 5G network. Here in this article we will focus how COVID has affected the research and innovation on 5G in the whole world.
This 5G network was designed to deliver very fast speeds almost 100x times than the popular connectivity all over the world that is 4G. This enhanced connectivity will help in some technological advancement as well like running driverless cars, drone delivery, and fast gaming which you can’t even think of.
Not only this, the year 2020 is a different year when every task is happening remotely either work from home for corporate workers or online classes for students. All these things require high connection reliability so in that case too 5G will enhance a lot.
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What is 5G?
As we have mentioned above the internet speed will be 100 times faster than the globally popular 4G network. But it is not just limited to internet speeds, the response times will be faster as well like in 4G, the response time is 50 ms whereas in 5G it will be only 1ms. In today’s world, remote work has increased demand and so it requires a faster streamlined experienced that can be guaranteed with 5G.
5G will also offer a much-personalized web experience using an advanced technique called network slicing which is a way of creating separate wireless networks on the cloud. Many analysts have confirmed that this 5G will have a huge positive impact on IOT like running robots smoothly.
A gamer needs high response times and smooth internet so that their games do not lag. With 5G, you can experience a smooth gaming experience in PCs or mobiles. Besides, the 5G network can also be a boon for businesses, especially for online marketers/businesses.
Some researchers observed that 2020 will be a great year for 5G build-out before the COVID-19 outbreak. Then COVID-19 happened and this has turned down the economic market to a very off-side. This economic turndown has caused a short-term negative impact on 5G rollout but in the long-term, it can be a boon across the globe.
Here, we will look at how “COVID affects the research & innovation on 5G in the whole world.”
Let us take a look at the short-term impact on 5G for the pandemic.
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Short-term impact on 5G across the world –
Here, we will examine some of the negative impacts on the 5G rollout due to the pandemic. As mentioned earlier, many CSPs (Communication Service Providers) started for the trials of 5G. There are various ways followed by several countries to make 5G ready for rollouts like the spectrum auctions, infrastructure contracts, and various other demanding initiatives.
But this year, we are observing some of the negative impacts on the rollouts and also the readiness of 5G throughout the world. This is because some countries are delaying their spectrum auctions whereas some others are resistant to spend like Spain, France and Austria have delayed the spectrum auctions. We feel that this delay will result in the delay of 5G rollouts by at least 6 months.
As we know that this year there was a global lockdown for a long time but afterward, the economic market has improved a bit though, so we can make some predictions like:
We can expect a slow 5G Capex spend this year in developed markets and may rebound next year that is 2021. So we can think that 2021 may become a blessing year for 5G.
The making of display panels that are used in products like the 5G smartphones as well has been impacted a lot due to this pandemic. In addition to this, most of the workforces are working from home and not able to come to their workplaces. This can result in a shortage of LCD polarizers and LCD module circuit boards.
The telecom providers are more looking for focused capacity coverage now instead of large population coverage which implies that they are allowing 25% or 50% of the workforce in the office so that will hamper production to some extent.
The managing director of Mobile Ecosystem, Mark Lowenstein wrote,
“…will be a negative impact on 5G in the short term, but the longer-term is looking even more favorable.”
451 Research conducted a recent survey where it was indicated that the COVID-19 outbreak has caused a negative impact on business operations as stated by 79% of organizations. As predicted by Juniper Research, for the smart device vendors this pandemic can cause a $42 billion revenue gap over the next nine months.
So these things can temporarily slow down the 5G rollouts but in the long-term, there are a lot of opportunities and also a field of the tremendous rise in demand. We will see now.
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Increasing Demand for 5G in the long-term through a new lens –
What we learned from COVID-19 is that remote work or study has a huge demand and in such cases, the main thing people require is high internet connectivity. This has made the invention of 5G more demanding.
Not only that, since the beginning of this pandemic, there was a lot of pressure on the public health systems. 5G has helped a lot with this as well. For example in China, the telecommunication operators have collaborated in with technology providers so that a 5G network can be rapidly set up which has helped to test and treat a high number of Covid-19 infections.
Within three days, Huawei installed a 5g network in a hospital that has helped to invent some 5G-enabled robots who helped the medical staff to a great extent for treatment of COVID-19 patients thus decreasing the contact of medical staff with the patients hence enabling one of the major precautions social distancing.
Apart from this, 5G base stations were opened in two emergency field hospitals (Huoshenshan and Leishenshan) thus offering live broadcasting for the construction of these two hospitals in real-time.
With 5G-equipped solutions, it has helped in accurate monitoring in public areas and also several support of communication with HD remote diagnosis through SMART ambulances while transferring patients. Thus 5G network and 4K smart ambulances have transformed the medical emergency response model thus it can be a blessing of effective and efficient treatment.
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Revised Business Models with new partnerships –
The innovative use cases like remote work and gaming will also benefit from 5G networks by combining it with cloud offerings as we have already started to see like AT&T and Microsoft.
To ensure smooth business operations during heavy traffic, there will be reignited discussions between service providers and OTT players.
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The ending…
Though the title of this section has “ending” in it, it is the beginning because with 5G world will be able to communicate seamlessly to uphold our communities and maintain it in a good manner during tough times. The communication service providers are planning to take significant measures so that this can happen without disruption.
Maybe this has somewhat taken aback in the race but this is only for a short duration, in the long duration as described it will flourish more. There is a lot more to come and that will continue because there is no end to technology and so to 5G as it is also technological innovation.
