5G: How Increased Speeds Can Change Everything

How 5G and Gigabit Internet will change the infrastructure

As 5G and Gigabit internet begin to get traction internationally, more and more users are inching closer to the data transfer speeds you could expect from the network traffic at a data center.

This speed will have large reaching impacts for everyone, from SME’s to consumers, and enterprise.

5G will have an impact similar to the introduction of electricity or the car, affecting entire economies and benefiting entire societies. — Steve Mollenkopf CEO of Qualcomm

What is 5G?

5G is the fifth generation of mobile networking tech, it is promising much higher speeds and lower latency (the delay between requesting and receiving data) than previous generations. Where 4G max’s out at around 100Mbps, the equivalent of downloading a HD film in 7 minutes, 5G has a theoretical top speed of 1–10Gbps, download a full HD film in as little as 4 seconds.

Network Speeds from 5g.co.uk

What is Gigabit Internet

Gigabit Fibre is the next generation of wired internet, it utilises Fibre-Optic cables from home/business directly, allowing for super fast speeds, both up and downstream.

As 5G has a smaller range than traditional 3G and 4G, more and more small antenna will start to appear across the country, with private industry and government currently battling over what infrastructure they can be attached to.

Cloud Delegation: The magic behind 5G

The core impact of 5G and Gigabit internet, isn’t so much the speed of which your device can process data, but rather that amount of work it can delegate to the cloud. AWS, Microsoft & Google are already aware of this with projects like Google Stadia and Windows Virtual Desktop (more on that later).

By delegating to the cloud, 5G devices become portals into the cloud mainframe, rather than independent devices. Connectivity is king in our streaming world, and the power of low latency streaming data provides ample opportunities for early adopters.

With the ability to push huge swathes of data out to the cloud, local devices suddenly become far more powerful, a 5G phone with a 1Gb per second connection will be able to utilise the same cloud computing power as a £3000 desktop computer.

In theory 5G will be a great equaliser giving users across the world equal access to computing power. This has historically been the case as cost per megabyte drops with maximum download speeds.

Faster downloads = cheaper data. Supply and Demand at its best

While tech equality is the dream, the reality probably won’t be quite so sweet.

What can be done with 5G & Gigabit Internet

Google Stadia — Gaming

Image: Popular Science, from a great article about designing the Stadia Controller

Google recently announced Stadia, a cloud based gaming platform. With just a wifi enabled controller and either an Android Phone, Chrome Browser, or a Chromecast, users can play the latest games at the top spec. Modern consoles have a barrier for entry of hundreds of pounds, yet with Stadia, for £119, anyone with a fast internet connection can play the latest games at the highest quality, including 4K.

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) — Enterprise

Enterprises need all of their team running on the same platform and version, so Microsoft launched Windows Virtual Desktop, and AWS launched their own DaaS. Enterprise cloud solutions are designed to provision staff with desktop computing, again, all of the processing is in the cloud, so as long as the enterprises internet connection is fast enough, their upfront device costs massively shrink, being able to provide minimally powerful notebooks.

Machine Learning

The amount of computing power Machine Learning requires makes it unfeasible to practice on your local computer. What would take your home computer months to crunch will take a cloud datacenter seconds. By provisioning a virtual machine with one of the Big Nine, you don’t need to own a powerful computer to join the ML revolution, just a reasonable network connection and lots and lots of data.

Kaggle is a great cloud based ML resource for beginners

The future with 5G

User Interfaces

With low latency and high speeds, I foresee UI being disrupted for the better with the 5G revolution. With computing being pushed to the cloud, context can be incorporated into every click and tap like never before. Every decision a user has previously made can be distilled into a completely contextual and appropriate set of options.

Streaming Everything

There is no need to have powerful devices if all computing lives in the cloud, so streaming all data will be the norm, even future releases of iOS and Android could be loaded from the cloud.

Thinner Devices

If devices only need to stream data, they suddenly require a lot less components, prepare for computers, phones and electronics to become even thinner, leaving data centers to do the heavy lifting.

The Big Nine become more powerful

With users becoming more and more reliant on cloud services, the Big Nine’s stranglehold on the tech industry only tightens further.

Wireless 5G VR, no computer necessary.

Cloud VR

If latency is low enough, VR processing could be done in the cloud, allowing for large scale wireless 5G VR, AR & MR.

TL:DR;

5G will disrupt tech and push everything to the cloud. Get ready for change.