How 5G will impact everyday experiences

The hype surrounding 5G has been pretty extraordinary with some claiming that it will change the whole world for the better. 

OK, some of these claims are rooted in fact, but it’s hard to get your head around them unless you really understand the nuts and bolts of what 5G is and why it’s not simply a 4G upgrade. 

Explaining 5G; low latency and high bandwidth 

The two key principles behind 5G are low latency and high bandwidth.

Low latency is the time between interaction and output, ie, the time it takes between an action and a result. High bandwidth is the amount of information you can send at one time. It’s these two principles that you always need to keep in mind when talking about 5G.

All anyone will actually need to access a potential new wealth of technology is a screen.

This ability to send a huge amount of information instantly will allow us to solve challenges that we have in the world today and come up with solutions that would have previously been impossible.

How will this change everyday experience?

5G is not a magic pill. What the low latency and high bandwidth really means is that every person has a new and more efficient way to gain information from cloud computing, where a huge amount of information can be delivered to a relatively ‘dumb’ device such as your ‘smart’ phone or tablet. In real terms, this means that all anyone will actually need to access a potential new wealth of technology is a screen, which could make expensive hardware purchases based on the capability of the device something of the past. These new devices are called ‘thin clients’ and a whole new industry will be formed around them. 

These new devices are called ‘thin clients’ and a whole new industry will be formed around them.

Thin clients will become an access point to new services and products; it is a skeleton key to the fourth industrial revolution and how we interact with these thin clients will dramatically change. At the moment we are still interacting with technology in the same way we have since the 60s, via a screen, mouse and keyboard (yes touchpads/interactive screens, but the principle is the same). We are still being forced to be technology-literate, 5G will allow us to build hardware and services that are people-literate, allowing us to communicate over and with technology in the same way that we communicate with each other, voice, touch, smell etc..

We are still being forced to be technology-literate, 5G will allow us to build hardware and services that are people-literate.

This is where immersive technology plays a role, as all devices will be thin clients capable of streaming services which are streaming from the cloud, giving us the most realistic VR experience or being able to deliver spatially mapped AR content to every corner of the globe via the AR cloud. The AR cloud offers a whole new platform for experience. It could be seen as the next internet, an internet that is spatially mapped against our real world. This is where the magic really starts to happen.

The AR cloud offers a whole new platform for experience. It could be seen as the next internet.

Most consumer hardware providers, especially in the phone market, are looking towards this future at the moment. You may be aware of the constant rumblings across the tech industry about the arrival of the first smartphone-connected, consumer-ready augmented reality glasses to hit the shops. This will herald a discernible shift towards internet of things-enabled consumer products. 

The internet of things (IOT) is when all devices are interrelated and connected, with 5G capacity there is the potential for millions of devices being able to talk to each other within a square kilometre, accurately delivering data to users in the physical world. This information delivered to a user could be anything from the location of vehicles and other people, to the direction of the wind. All of this information will form a data-driven layer to deliver on the promise of the AR cloud.