Right on the edge of an interconnectedness world, where the life of millions of people around the globe changes daily because of the advances in technology, the evolution of mobile communications will revolutionize our world and benefit entire economies and societies —even more than electricity, rail systems, or the automobile.
While the first-generation of mobile communications, or 1G (GSM), only allowed analog voice phone calls and the second-generation, 2G (GPRS and EDGE) introduced digital voice services to the masses. The third-generation or 3G (HSPA and HSPA+ /UMTS) brought the mobile internet and computing together with the bloom of mobile apps and opened doors for the fourth-generation (4G or LTE) and its mobile broadband to allow streaming video and audio, immediate ride-hailing, and the social media explosion. The promising fifth-generation networks, or better known as 5G, alongside with Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Cloud technologies might transform everything we know, impacting more deeply than 3G and 4G.
5G networks will move mobile communication technology from (consumer and enterprise use) connecting people to people and information, towards securely instantaneously and extensively connecting people to everything (more industrial focused). 5G is deploying Enhanced Mobile Broadband (EMBB), Massive Internet of Things (MIoT), and Mission Critical Services (MCS) to transform basically every industry sector: from doctors connecting with the medical devices of their patients or Augmented Reality (AR) in retail shops with real-time updates; to self-driving vehicles and the smart roads they are on and even the enablement of Smart Cities with hiper-connected sensors.
IMAGE: 5G global economic activity by 2035 - IHS Markit
5G will deliver multi-Gigabit speeds and massive capacity over short distances opening up many new applications and use cases; however, as network speed and high bandwidth are critical for edge analytics and intelligence, it is not enough. The limiting factor for most of the Internet of Things (IoT) applications will be data orchestration: effectively and efficiently extract data from IoT-connected devices and integrate it (after processing and analyzing it) with other data sources in the Cloud, while securing the connectivity and information on those devices. Intelligent data orchestration, not higher network speeds, is what really will change the architectures to better process data on the 5G "deep edge" IoT devices.
The economic impact of 5G networks will change the complete game, globally surpassing the USD 12 trillion by 2035 —also supporting 22 million jobs, according to The 5G economy: How 5G will contribute to the global economy study by IHS Markit analysis.